David Clarke

Excelsior

Chapters 5-8

Chapter Five

"Yes, I'm alive," I said to Wolfie, "but I won't be if you don't let me breathe!"

"Sorry:" he said, relaxing the hug a bit without actually letting me go. "But what happened? Where have you been?"

"That's an excellent question," said Pointy Beard, "and we'd all like to hear the answer. But give him a chance, Wolfie: he hasn't even had a chance to sit down yet. Come on, Leo – come and sit down, and bring your friend, too." And he indicated a comfy-looking sofa at one side of the room.

"Leo?" I asked. "Who's Leo? And what did he mean by 'And' just now?" I turned to look at the butler. "You never gave them my name."

"Ah," said Pointy Beard. "Sir Edmund did warn us you've been suffering from amnesia. It appears that you still have that problem… look, come and sit down, and then we'll all introduce ourselves, and you can tell us where you've been for the past four years. Allchorn," (this to the butler) "I'd like you to stay, because I'm sure the other servants will have questions, and if you hear it first-hand you can make sure that no stupid rumours start to circulate."

The butler bowed and closed the door, taking up station beside it.

"Now," said Pointy Beard, "I am Lord Folliot of Chisbury, and I've been looking after the estate in your absence. The previous duke was my brother-in-law. You seem to remember Wolfie…"

"Not really," I interrupted. "In fact it might be best if you just assume I can't remember anything at all."

"Very well. In that case let me present Wolfgang-Christian, Markgraf von Brandenburg-Bayreuth."

That name made me and Alex look at each other – so that was why I'd thought of it when I was trying to come up with the names of European aristocrats.

"He's been our guest for several years now, for reasons which I'll explain later," Lord Folliot went on. "And this is Air Admiral Sir Neil Faulkner, who is visiting for a day or two, and over there is Lord Brookhampton, our neighbour, and finally here is Jonathan Hall, our estate manager and administrator."

"I see," I said. "And who am I?"

"You are Leo de Courtenay, Fifth Duke of Culham."

So that explained it: the butler had been announcing me, not telling me who Pointy Beard was. But the idea that I was a duke seemed completely absurd.

"Are you sure?" I asked. "I mean, how do you know?"

"Because you lived here for the first ten years of your life," said Lord Folliot. "And Sir Edmund says that you still have the watch you were given on your tenth birthday, too. There's no possible mistake. Besides, you clearly recognised Wolfie – nobody outside the family calls him that."

"So… what about my parents? Where are they?"

"I'm sorry," he said. "Your father was killed in battle five and a half years ago, and your mother… she died on the same day that you disappeared, when Daedalus went down."

"Was that the ship that was shot down by the Eagles?" I asked.

"Exactly. So you do remember."

"No," I said. "Not really. But I've been having a recurring dream about it – at least, I'm fairly sure that's what it's about. Was my mother the captain?"

"Yes, she was, and she was one of the best. She was a tremendous loss, not just to the family but to the country too."

"But… my dream has taken me up to the point that the second Congreve struck, and they said there weren't any parachutes… jumpshades, I mean. So how did you and me and Wolfie survive?"

"Caroline – that was your mother – kept one in her personal locker. She wanted to give it to Wolfie – he has precedence, you understand. But Wolfie wouldn't take it – he wanted you to have it. So you argued for a bit, and eventually Wolfie forced you to take it, but then you refused to jump without him, and so the pair of you clung onto each other and jumped together. Then one of the deck crew came down to the bridge, and when he found there were no shades he tried to give his to Caroline. She wouldn't take it either: she said I had to go, because you and Wolfie would need a man to look after you – you were both only ten, of course. So we argued, because even when she gave me a direct order as captain I refused to take her shade. In the end she stood by the hole in the wall and said that unless I put the shade on immediately she was going to jump without one. There was an outside chance that she might survive the crash if she stayed on board, so I gave in and took it, and there hasn't been a day since when I haven't regretted it, because the ship came down in open country and the entire bridge crew died. Your mother was the bravest woman I have ever known."

"So what happened to you and me?" I asked Wolfie.

"Everything went well at the start," he told me. "We were only small so it was no problem for the shade to take us both. But as we came close to the ground the wind suddenly got up and you had to take the control lines to prevent the shade from collapsing, and I was not strong enough to keep hold of you. So I fell, and the wind took you away. I landed badly, and after that I was unable to see where you went.

"Your uncle landed not too far away from me, so I was able to call for help. A number of the engineering and deck crew had managed to jump clear – they had their own shades, of course – and a couple of them landed close enough to help too, and so they kept me warm and controlled the blood loss until they could get a carriage for me. But they were so busy looking after me that they did not have time to go looking for you, and by the time the carriage reached me it was already dark."

"We looked as best we could," said Lord Folliot, "but in the end we had to call it off for the night. Next morning we organised a proper search: one of the French navy ships cruised above the probable landing area while the militia checked on the ground, covering the areas of woodland where you might not have been visible from the air. Eventually the French found your shade: it looked as if you had been blown into one of the megaliths at the Great Circle, because the shade was basically intact, but there was blood high up on the stone. But there was no other trace of you. We thought that perhaps you had banged your head and stumbled off somewhere, but no matter how far we searched, that was the last trace of you we found until today.

"We thought that you had to be alive, and in the end the only other explanation we could think of was that one of the Eagles had dropped troops and they had taken you and smuggled you out of the country – we were fairly sure the Eagle couldn't have landed because there were no signs, and besides, Gouvion-St-Cyr was still in the area – it would have been suicide for an Eagle to try landing beneath an enemy ship. But we received no ransom demand, the French were confident that if the enemy had landed on their coast they would have been picked up, and none of our agents abroad could find any word about you. So – what really happened?"

"I don't know," I said. "I have no memory of anything before I woke up in a barn near Winterbourne Stoke. But – and this is going to sound insane – the barn wasn't in this world. Somehow I stepped through some sort of hole between worlds, and when I woke up I was in a completely different one. Of course, because I couldn't remember anything at all I had no idea that I had left my own world – in fact I didn't know this one existed until today either.

"The problem is that I still can't remember anything at all, other than the glimpses I got in my dream. I suppose that was part of the last day and that it stuck in my head, but I can only remember from the point where you spotted the second enemy ship to the moment one of the crew told you that the jumpshades had been destroyed by the first Congreve. So even if I am the duke, you're going to have to teach me absolutely everything from scratch."

"Maybe not," said Mr Hall, the estate manager. "I've heard of cases of amnesia before where something happens to trigger a shock, and that clears the mind and the memories return. If we could find a suitable trigger… perhaps we should consult a physician."

I thought he might be onto something there – after all, I'd already had one small part of my memory restored when Alex had taken hold of my penis, although I certainly wasn't going to mention that now.

"I'd certainly be in favour of that," I said. "It'd take forever to relearn ten years' worth of stuff… well, I suppose it would take ten years, but you know what I mean."

"So what was the other world like?" asked Wolfie.

"Different," I said. "I mean, you can see that from our clothes. It would take a long time to tell you about it, but I suppose we're going to be here for a while, so we'll be able to tell you about it as we go along."

"Are we staying?" Alex whispered in my ear. "I mean, I suppose it could be fun to be a duke, but you don't know anything about this place at all. Perhaps being a duke means you have to sit in Parliament all day long listening to a lot of old farts droning on about the price of peas in Norfolk or something."

"Well… I think I ought to stay for a little bit at least," I whispered back. "After all, they've been looking for me for four years. Besides, right now we don't know how to go back, so we haven't got a lot of choice. In fact…"

I looked around the room. "Everyone, I want to introduce Alex. He's from the other world, and we've been friends more or less since we met. Of course I'd be happy if he were to decide to stay here with me, but he has a family in London – the other London, I mean – and so he'd like to at least be able to go back if he chooses to. The problem is that we have no idea how we got here, or how to get back – so one thing I want to do is to try to find a way. We'd both appreciate any help you can give."

"We will do whatever we can," said Lord Folliot. "And in the meantime we will be happy to welcome your friend as our guest. And that brings me to another issue: the ducal bedroom has been closed up for four years, and it will need to be aired out. Your own old room has also been closed, but being smaller it will be easier to bring it back into use – I know Wolfie goes in there frequently, so it won't need a great deal of airing. Would you be prepared to use it for tonight? That should give Mrs Sweeting enough time to prepare the master bedroom."

"I think I'd probably prefer to stick to my old room for the time being," I said. "It'll be time enough to think about using the ducal room when – or if – I get my memories back. Until them I'm not really the duke at all."

"Well… if that is what you wish. Perhaps seeing your old room may be the trigger to restore your missing past. In fact, perhaps this would be a good time for you to have a tour of the house: maybe you will remember something else. Wolfie, perhaps you could show Leo around? And Allchorn, please ask Mrs Sweeting to make up Leo's old room, and also one of the guest rooms not too far away from it."

"Come on, then," invited Wolfie. "Let us see if you remember anything."

He started to move forwards, which is when I realised that he was sitting in a wheelchair. It didn't look like any wheelchair I had ever seen before, though: it was made of polished wood and had brass fittings, and it looked quite heavy, although since it was moving of its own accord I supposed that wouldn't be a problem. I assumed it was electric, but when we got out into the hall it slowed down and stopped, at which point Wolfie turned to us and asked "Could one of you wind me up, please?"

Alex and I looked at each other. I'm sure he was thinking the same thing that I was: we could easily make some pointed remarks about Wolfie's hair colour or his freckles, or some even less politically acceptable ones about him being in a wheelchair, but it seemed unlikely that this was what he was asking for.

"The handle is on the back of the seat," he went on when neither of us moved, and at that point I spotted a large brass crank-handle hooked onto the back of the chair. I unhooked it and Wolfie indicated the hole it went into on the right hand side of the seat.

I turned the handle until it wouldn't turn any more and replaced it on the back of the chair, and Wolfie flicked a switch. The chair started to roll forward again.

"You've got a clockwork wheelchair," I said in disbelief.

"Yes. Why should I not have? It works perfectly well, and it is not as if there is an obvious alternative, is there? Can you imagine a steam-powered wheelchair? I suppose it would be nice and warm in the winter, but it would hardly be practical. I would need to have a fireman with me all the time, and he would need a little cart to carry the coal…"

"You could get a self-loading firebox, like the ones on the newer car… I mean, auto-carriages," I said.

"Sure, if I did not mind a chair the size of a carriage. I do not think it would fit through any of the doors in the house, though."

"What's wrong with an electric wheelchair?"

He let go of the little lever and the chair stopped. "Sorry?" he asked, staring at me.

"An electric wheelchair," I repeated. "You do have electricity here, don't you?"

"What is electricity?"

I gaped at him, and then I looked at the lights fixed to the wall nearby. At first glance they looked electric, but then I looked more closely and saw that what I'd taken for cables were in fact pipes, and that the lights had little white mantles instead of bulbs.

"These are gas, aren't they?" I asked.

"Of course. What did you expect – candles?"

"You mean, you really don't know what electricity is?"

"Sorry. Anyway, this is the library."

Oh, my God, I thought, a world without electricity. How was I going to survive that?

The library wasn't particularly big, but it did have floor to ceiling shelves all around the walls, and a couple of island shelves, too. In one corner was a door that led into a reading room furnished with a couple of comfortable-looking club chairs that stood on each side of a fireplace, and also two reading desks equipped with gaslights.

Next to the library was a billiard-room which contained a full-size billiard table at one end and a number of chairs at the other, next to a window offering a view of a formal garden. Also on the ground floor were another receiving room, a large dining room whose long table could probably accommodate twenty people, a smaller dining-room whose table was set for six, a room that looked like another dining room but which Wolfie said was the conference room, and finally a ballroom large enough to entertain a couple of hundred people. The ballroom alone was bigger than Auntie Megan's entire house.

"And back there," said Wolfie, indicating a door behind the great staircase, "are the kitchens, the scullery, the storage and prep rooms and the servants' dining room. Now let us go upstairs."

I thought he was going to find that difficult, but on the other side of the staircase a small lift had been installed.

"I am afraid it is only big enough for my chair," said Wolfie. "Could you meet me on the first floor?"

I wondered how the lift worked in a house with no electricity, until I saw Wolfie turning a handle at one side of the cabin. Apparently the lift was clockwork, too.

Alex and I walked up the stairs. The first floor contained a couple of morning rooms and a study – the study was clearly in use as there were papers all over the desk – and in the far corner was the office used by Mr Hall the estate manager, who seemed to keep his paperwork in a much more orderly fashion. There were two full bathrooms and two separate WCs, and the rest of the rooms on this floor were bedrooms. The ducal bedroom was huge, and the bed looked old enough to have been slept in by King Henry VIII, and large enough for most of his wives to have shared it with him at the same time.

"Bloody hell!" exclaimed Alex. "If you shared that with your wife you'd need to communicate with her by telephone! 'Hello, darling, I'm on my way over to your side. I'll be there in half an hour'."

Okay, that was a slight exaggeration, but I really didn't fancy sleeping in it – or at least not until I was a lot bigger.

Wolfie indicated Lord Folliot's room, though he didn't take us inside, and pointed out the guest room the visiting Air Admiral was using. There were two other bedrooms on this floor, neither of which was in use at present.

On we went, up to the second floor – Wolfie used his lift again – and here, on one corner, was my bedroom. It was twice as big as my room in London, though the bed itself was a mere double, rather than the monstrosity in the ducal bedchamber.

"They moved your clothes and most of your toys into storage about a year after you went missing," Wolfie told me, which explained the empty cupboards and wardrobes. "I do not suppose the clothes will fit you now, though. I am sure Uncle Gil will arrange to get some new ones for you, but you can borrow some of mine in the meantime – we are about the same size, I think."

"Uncle Gil?" I queried.

"Lord Folliot," he clarified. "Of course he really is your uncle, but we both always called him 'Uncle Gil' – his first name is Gilbert."

Before I could answer that the door opened and a middle-aged woman in black came in, followed by a couple of maids with their arms full of bedding.

"Oh! Sorry, Master Leo," she said. "I didn't know you were here. We'll come back later."

"No, that's fine, Mrs Sweeting," I said, guessing that this must be she. "We're just looking round. We'll get out of your way."

"As you wish, Master Leo. And can I just say that it's good to have you back with us."

"Thank you," I said. "I'm afraid I can't remember being here before – I expect Allchorn told you about the amnesia – but I'm sure it'll come back to me sooner or later."

"Well, let's hope so," she said.

"She has obviously forgotten what you were like," commented Wolfie as we went into the next room, which proved to be his. "One time she caught us climbing one of the chimneys – inside it, I mean. We had been reading about how chimney-sweeps used to send boys up the chimneys to clean them and we wanted to see if it was possible – we would have been about eight, I think. We came down with about half a ton of soot on our clothes and in our hair and we had walked it into the carpet before she caught us. That was the first time your father actually beat us – and the last, as it turned out, because he died four months later."

"How did he die?"

"It was in the Winter Retreat of 2005. Your father was commanding the rear-guard as Marshal Faivre's army was pulling back to the Rhine, but he held back from the general retreat in order to give Wilhelm-August of Saxony time to extricate himself from Wetzlar and join the retreat. By the time Wilhelm-August caught up with him they had been cut off. They fought their way back to the Rhine, where Faivre's men had been holding a bridge for them near Bendorf, just north of Koblenz, but only about a third of the troops had crossed it when an Eagle somehow avoided the rocket batteries and bombed the bridge. Your father was still on the far side.

"Some of the troops managed to swim across, but most of the others were killed or captured. We were told that Grand Duke Mikhail tried to stop the attack, but there were communication problems, and by the time the firing stopped your father was dead. The Grand Duke actually sent your mother a personal apology, for what that was worth, and your father collected a sackful of posthumous medals, from the Saxons and French as well as from Britain, though those are not much compensation for losing your husband or your father, either. He was a brave man, though."

It seemed odd that I couldn't remember any of that. Surely if your father dies in war – or anywhere else, come to that – you would remember it? But I still couldn't remember anything about him.

We continued our tour. The only other occupied bedroom on this floor was Mr Hall's, and that was over in the other wing, directly above his office – he had a private staircase between the two. Otherwise there were some more guest rooms, a nursery with a bedroom for a nanny beside it, two bathrooms and a school-room.

"Ah," I said. "Does that mean you… we… have a private tutor, then?"

"Yes. Obviously we are on holiday at the moment, but from September we will be back in here."

"Why aren't we at a proper school?"

"Mainly because we are not exactly normal children: in addition to ordinary lessons we do a lot of practical training. Your mother was grooming you as her successor, and since you disappeared Uncle Gil has continued my training, and I am sure he will want to do the same with you. Of course my uncle might not be prepared to let me captain a ship in battle, but there is no reason why you cannot."

"You mean that I'm going to be trained as an airship captain?"

"Well, if you get your memory back you will find that you have already had a lot of training. And if you have inherited your parents' courage you will be an excellent one."

Somehow 'Wartime airship captain' had never figured among my career choices, and nor had it ever been covered in careers days at school.

"So who is your uncle, and why won't he let you do it?" I asked.

"Because I am fifth… at least, I think it is still fifth – in line to the throne of Prussia, and my uncle – who is second in line – will not let me take the risk. His two boys are only three and five, so they are still at risk of childhood illnesses, and after me the succession becomes really complicated. Of course it is all academic: the way things are at the moment there is no realistic chance of Prussia being liberated in the near future. Still, I am fairly sure that I will be grounded from all combat flights, just in case. My uncle was livid when he heard that I had been on Daedalus.

"Anyway, that is about it for the tour. Shall we go back downstairs, or would you prefer to wait for Mrs Sweeting to finish preparing your room?"

"What about the third floor?" I asked.

He gave me a stare. "That is just servant quarters," he said. "Most of them have not been used for many years, either. The staff here used to be a lot bigger, apparently."

"I'd like to see anyway," I said. "Except… Alex, would you mind waiting down here? You can wait in Wolfie's room, or in mine once it's ready. We won't be long."

"But why…?"

"Because I want to try something that might help me to remember. Trust me – please?"

"Okay, you're the duke," said Alex, and he headed back towards Wolfie's room, though he looked back over his shoulder as he went.

"Come on, then," I said to Wolfie.

"The lift does not go up to the third floor – we did not think it was necessary."

"Then I'll carry you."

"It is all right," he said, standing up. "I can walk – I am just likely to be a little slow, that is all."

The staircase up to the third floor was narrower and much more functional than the one to the first and second floors, and the one at the front of the house – the one we were on now – was hardly ever used. Those servants who lived in the house used the third floor rooms in the other wing, and those could be accessed from the rear or servants' staircase that ran all the way up from the kitchen area.

Up here were box rooms and storage cupboards and…

"Stop!" I said. "I had one other memory flash, and it was about this floor. There's a room we used to use as our private hideaway, and I want to see if I can find it without you telling me which one it was."

I set off along the corridor with Wolfie at my shoulder. The doors all looked the same, but surely I would recognise the one where…

I ducked a little to bring my point of view down to where it had been when I was ten, and then I just knew. I marched briskly forward and grabbed the door handle… and found that the door was locked. My shoulders slumped – I'd felt sure…

And then I looked at Wolfie and saw that he was grinning and holding up a key.

"Dear God, he remembered," he said, under his breath and in German.

"Yes, I did," I replied in the same language. "Give me the key, Wolfie."

"Why are you speaking German?" he asked, giving it to me.

"Well, because you are… no, wait, that's not it," I said as I unlocked the door. "It was a club rule, wasn't it? We only speak German in our HQ."

I opened the door, and now I got a real memory flash of the room as I had last seen it, with several of our toys on the furniture and the twin paintings on the wall above the fireplace, my childish attempt at the red eagle of Brandenburg and his not much better effort at my leaping lion…

"What happened to the paintings?" I asked, still in German.

"You really do remember! I left them here for a long time – I could not get up the stairs without a lot of effort, and in any case I kept hoping you would come back. In the end I took them down and cleared everything out of here. They are down in my room now. Then I put the dust-sheets on and left. This is the first time I have been in here for … almost two years, I think. But now you are back, perhaps we should air the room out a little."

He went and opened both windows. Because this was a corner room they looked out to the front and side of the house, allowing us to see a large part of the grounds.

"So," he continued, "can you remember anything else? Like why we chose this room, perhaps?"

"Because it's on the corner, so we can see a long way… no, it wasn't that, was it? I can't see it, though."

I carefully removed the dust sheet and lay down on the bed.

"Come and sit beside me," I said, and when he was sitting at my side I took his hand and closed my eyes. I couldn't see anything specific, but I was aware of a tremendous sense of belonging, as if lying in that room with Wolfie at my side was somehow at the core of my being, or at least, the being of my younger self.

"Wolfie, I'm really sorry," I said, reverting to English.

"Why are you sorry?"

"Because you've been waiting for four years for Leo to come home, and when he finally gets here you find out that he isn't really Leo at all, just a complete stranger wearing his face. And I can sense what an important relationship you had with him, so I can understand how difficult this must be for you."

He didn't look very happy at that moment, so I pulled him down to lie next to me, hugged him and, as I had done previously with Alex, gave him a gentle kiss on the cheek. And at that moment I had another flash of memory – just a quick one, but one that answered his question.

"I know why we chose this room," I said, getting up and walking over to the fireplace.

It took me a while to find it, but eventually I located the hidden catch, and when I pressed it the entire left-hand side of the recess opened up, revealing a black hole behind it.

"Can you remember where it goes?" asked Wolfie, returning us to the use of German.

"No, but I'm really looking forward to exploring it. I bet there are plenty of memories stuck in there!"

"I have not been in there since you went away," he told me. "The passages are very narrow and the stairs are too difficult for me to manage on my own. But if you are with me you can make sure that I do not fall."

"Just what is the problem with your leg?" I asked.

"Close the panel and I will show you."

I managed to do that almost without thinking about it and when I turned round I saw that Wolfie had undone his belt and was in the process of removing his trousers. Once they were off I saw that his left leg ended just below the knee, and below that was a wooden prosthesis, held on with a set of straps. He undid the straps and handed me his wooden leg.

"I told you that I landed badly," he said. "Actually I smashed my foot, ankle and leg up almost completely: both the bones in the lower leg were broken in several places. They did try to put it all back together, but in the end they had to give up. At least they managed to save my knee, otherwise I'd be unable to bend my leg at all, and that would make it awkward to get about. As it is I can walk, although it gets uncomfortable if I have to go very far."

"Oh, God, Wolfie," I said, putting the prosthesis down on the bed and sitting next to him. "This is my fault – if you'd been wearing the shade it wouldn't have happened."

"No, it would have happened to you instead, and I would feel even worse. Look, Leo, it was not your fault, all right? You had to take the steering lines or we could both have been killed. It was my fault for being too feeble to hold on to you. And it could be a whole lot worse: we are both alive, and we are together again… even if you are stuck inside your other-world person for the moment, I know you will find the way out sooner or later."

"Those straps have left some nasty marks," I said, lifting his legs onto the bed so that he could lie down. "Maybe we should get Alex to help: he's really good at massage."

"I would sooner you did it, to be honest. I know you are not going to laugh at me."

"Nor would Alex. He's really nice, Wolfie – he's been a great friend, and I know you'll like him when you get to know him."

I rubbed the area where the straps had marked the flesh. I didn't really know what I was doing, but the marks seemed to fade a little. I found myself looking at his underwear, which was a plain white cotton garment that was roughly the shape of a pair of boxers but without any buttons on the front or, so far as I could tell, an opening either. I was pleased to notice that there wasn't too much of a bulge there – hopefully I wasn't going to get shown up again if…

If what? I thought. No matter what history there might have been, my memory told me that I'd never met him before, so wasn't it a bit soon to be thinking about… well, that sort of thing?

I dragged my eyes away and let go of Wolfie's leg.

"Do not stop," he said, grabbing my wrist. "That felt good. If your friend can do that better than you he must be a real expert. Look, Leo… I want to like your friend, because it is clear that you like him very much. But… I am scared he will come between us."

"I don't think he will. Even without my memories I can tell that we had something very special, and once I get my memory back I don't think anything could get between us. But the point is that Alex won't want that, either – he'll just want what's best for me. I trust him. And… look, I think we should go back downstairs now. I'm going to want to spend a lot of time here with you, because I think the key to my memories is probably in this room, or perhaps through that panel in the fireplace, but right now I want to get back to Alex. This isn't his world, and everything here is going to be strange to him. I don't want to leave him on his own for too long."

"No, you are right. Can you help tighten the straps for me?"

He re-attached his leg and I tightened the straps, and then we put the dust-sheet back on the bed and went downstairs, though we left the windows in our room partly open to get the air circulating. We found that Mrs Sweeting had finished preparing my room (and the windows were open there, too), and that it was looking more like a normal bedroom. Alex was standing by one of the windows looking out at the grounds.

"Any luck with the memory?" he asked me.

"Just a couple of little flashes. I'm pretty sure it'll come, but I don't know how long it might take."

"Just relax," he advised. "The more you worry about it, the harder it'll be. Like you said, it'll come in the end, so just take it easy until it does."

There was a painting of a coat of arms above the fireplace now, and since the charge on the shield was a leaping lion I assumed that this was the arms of the dukedom. The lion looked familiar, and when I pulled my watch from the pocket of my bag I found out that the engraving on the front was identical.

"Look, Alex," I said, holding the watch up next to the painting. "I think that's why there's no name on the inside – after all, the lion in astrology is called Leo."

"More likely your mother did not put a name because you were now the duke," suggested Wolfie. "Your father died over a year before your tenth birthday, so perhaps having the leaping lion of Culham on the watch is a way of saying that it belongs to the duke."

"Yes, but loads of crests have lions on," said Alex. "It could belong to anyone with a lion on his shield."

Wolfie shook his head. "Most lions on shields are rampant or passant," he said. "Yours is a lion salient, and gardant, too – it's unique. A lion in that attitude could only be a Culham lion."

"So that's how Sir Edmund knew straight away who I was – or probably was," I said. "I suppose it's useful to be unique."

"You're just uniquely weird," said Alex. "Your coat of arms ought to have a large nut in the middle, surrounded by a wreath of nuts, underneath a nut tree."

"One day I'm going to dig out the Demetriou family crest," I said. "A large ox dormant, supported by a pair of baboons, I expect."

On another day that would have led to him jumping on me, but perhaps he was inhibited by Wolfie's presence, because he just gave me the finger instead.

Supper that evening was magnificent and took a very long time, and I actually lost count of the number of courses. I wondered if we were trying to impress the Air Admiral or if this was what every meal here was like, and I thought that if this was typical I was going to need to start doing some serious exercise if I didn't want to end up morbidly obese by Christmas. After the final course we politely declined Lord Folliot's invitation to join the men in the billiard-room for a cigar (though I don't think he seriously expected us to say yes, somehow) and said that we would retire for the night instead: it was late, and we'd had a rather eventful day, after all.

We went upstairs and waited for Wolfie by the lift shaft, and when he arrived we walked slowly towards our rooms.

"Can I ask a favour, MM?" said Alex. "See, they've made me up a room, but… I know this is going to sound well lame… but could I come and sleep in your room tonight? I can bring the mattress and sleep on the floor. It's just, with this not even being my own world… it feels… well, you know."

"Of course you can," I said. "Actually I'd prefer not to be on my own either. Go and get your stuff, and I'll help Wolfie with his leg."

"Huh?"

"I'll explain later. I'll see you in five minutes, okay?"

I followed Wolfie into his room and closed the door.

"I can manage on my own, you know," he said.

"I know that. I just wanted a chance to say 'Goodnight'. But since I'm here I might as well be useful."

So I helped him take off his trousers and then remove his leg, and then I rubbed the areas marked by the straps again.

"I am definitely going to ask you to do that every evening," he said. "Still, perhaps you should go – your friend will be waiting."

"Don't worry about Alex," I said. "He'll be fine. Give me your shirt and I'll hang it up for you."

So his shirt came over his head and I hung it and his trousers up in a small cupboard close to the bed, and then to my immense disappointment he took a long nightshirt from under his pillow and pulled it over his head. And only then did he reach underneath it and remove his underwear.

"Ha!" he said. "Got you – you should see the look on your face! You were hoping I was going to undress completely, were you not? And do not bother to lie. You have not changed at all!"

"What do you mean?"

"You liked making me undress. Of course, I liked making you undress, too – we played a lot of games like that. So, do you still want to see me undressed?"

"Well, yes, if you're offering." I didn't see any point in lying, and I was definitely curious, especially about whether, if he had any hair, it would be the same colour as the hair on his head.

"I knew it," he said, grasping his nightshirt. "You may be surprised – there have been some changes."

He pulled the nightshirt over his head and dropped it on the bed beside him. Of course I couldn't remember how he had looked before, but I guessed that the most significant change was the hair, because he did have some, thin curls of reddish-gold. There wasn't that much of it, but it looked good and it made me feel jealous.

"I bet you just kept some of the clippings last time you had a haircut and glued them on," I said.

"Check for yourself," he said.

I wasn't going to refuse an invitation like that, so I took hold and tugged gently. Of course I knew perfectly well that the hair was natural, but touching it – and it was somehow softer than I had expected – felt good. He obviously thought it felt good too, because almost at once he began to get an erection.

"I see that still hasn't grown a lot," I commented, though I had no idea how big it had been before. It didn't look that big, though, probably no more than four inches [10 cm].

"And yours has, I suppose?"

"Well… not really, if I'm honest," I admitted.

"Show me, then."

So I undid my belt, lowered my jeans and boxers to my knees and lifted my shirt out of the way.

"Aha! No hair," he commented. "That means I win the bet."

"What bet?"

"A long time ago we had a bet about which of us would grow hair first. I will tell you all about it when we are next upstairs. As for the rest… your balls are quite big, but I think my penis is still bigger."

"Crap!"

"Again, perhaps we can find out tomorrow. I will find a measuring rod."

He pulled his nightshirt on again, and I took that as my cue to get dressed too. I'd have liked to do a little more, but maybe this wasn't the time or place – I really didn't know what Alex would have said if he had caught us doing things we shouldn't, and I didn't want to find out, either. So I said goodnight to Wolfie, turned off his lamp and went back to my room. Alex was sitting on the side of the bed in his boxers.

"I don't really need to bring the mattress in here, do I?" he asked. "After all, the bed is big enough for both of us, isn't it?"

"Yes, I should think so," I said.

"Good. Then could you just go along to my room and turn my light out? I'm not sure how to do it, and I don't want gas leaking all night."

One of the servants had presumably lit the lamps in our rooms and so we hadn't had to touch them yet. I knew how they worked because I'd been on a holiday with Auntie Megan and Uncle Jim where we had stayed in a caravan that had gas lighting.

"Come here," I said, going to the lamp on my wall. "You see this little valve? All you have to do is to turn it until it's at right angles to the pipe. Go and do the one in your room while I get ready for bed."

He was back before I'd finished undressing, so obviously the valve hadn't given him any problems. I stripped down to my boxers and fished my shorts out of my bag along with the flashlight, which I put on the little table beside the bed.

"You're not actually going to wear those, are you?" he said, looking at the shorts.

"Well… I thought I should, just in case there's an emergency and we have to get up in the night."

"There won't be an emergency," he said. "This house has been here for… I dunno, two hundred years? So what makes you think it's suddenly going to burn down the moment we arrive?"

"Okay, I won't wear the shorts," I said.

"I should damned well think not," he said, and he pulled off his boxers and got into bed. I went and turned the lamp off and then removed mine and got in next to him.

"It's been a strange day, hasn't it?" he commented.

"It has. Look… I don't know how things work around here: for all I know an army of servants burst into the room at half-past six in the morning, all singing a merry song, and they open the curtains, drag us out of bed, dress us and hustle us downstairs for a fifteen course breakfast, all before we've even woken up. So how would you like me to do what I owe you now, rather than risking putting it off until the morning? Maybe that would at least add a decent ending to your strange day."

"It certainly would – just as long as you're sure. Like I said before, I don't want you to feel you have to."

"I don't. I feel that I want to, though."

I wriggled close to him, and he put his arm around me and pulled me closer still.

"Now I'm relying on you to get the bedding out of the way in time," I said. "I really don't want to get the servants talking on our first night here."

"Okay. But take your time – we've got all night!"

I had no memory of having ever done this before, although I was starting to think it likely that Wolfie and I would have done this for each other during my last stay in this house. Nonetheless, I had no real technique for doing it to someone else, so I just had to hope I wouldn't make too much of a mess of it. To start with I just stroked his body, and when I got to his groin I concentrated first on stroking his balls and feeling the thick, soft hair. And even when I took hold of his penis I began by holding it gently and caressing it slowly, and only started to rub it after a couple of minutes.

"That's great, MM," he encouraged me. "Keep doing it like that."

Of course I couldn't see what I was doing, but I didn't really need to: what I was holding was certainly too big to slip out of my fingers. It felt hot and hard and even bigger than it had looked back in the tent.

"Nearly there," he said, a lot sooner than I had expected.

"Do you want me to stop?" I asked.

"Not this time. This time I just want…"

He pushed the bedding away from his body, and I just kept going steadily until I felt it pulse in my hand, and then I just held on while it jerked three or four more times.

"Okay," he said, finally. "That's it. There are some tissues in the left hand pocket of my bag."

I grabbed the flashlight and rolled out of bed, finding the tissues and passing them to him, and then I held the torch while he cleaned himself up. We weren't sure what to do with the evidence – there wasn't a waste bin in the room, and in any case I found myself thinking about what the servants would say if they found them there. But Alex had the solution.

"I need a pee, so I'll flush them," he said, grabbing his boxers and pulling them on.

I got back into bed, and he reappeared a couple of minutes later and joined me.

"So, was that any good?" I asked.

"No, you need a lot of practice. Maybe if you do that for me twice a day from now on you'll have a good technique in a month or two."

"Yeah, right. Come on, Alex, seriously, was it okay?"

"It was wicked, awesome, sick or whichever word you like… probably here they'd say that it was 'rather extraordinary' or something like that. But, yeah, I really liked it, and you did it perfectly. Thanks, MM. It's not everyone who can say he's had that done for him by a duke."

It was quiet for about five minutes, and I thought he'd gone to sleep, but then he said quietly, "If you get your memory back… you're not going to forget me, are you?"

"No, of course not! This place might have been the first ten years of my life, but you've been the last three, and I'm not going to forget that. It's not like an 'either-or' situation: there's no reason why remembering the missing bit should make me forget everything else, is there?"

"I know that logically, but… I'm still scared, okay? What happens if you turn into their missing duke and just forget about me?"

"I won't. I think me and Wolfie were really close before, but even if I get my memories of him back, you're still going to be my friend, okay? Nothing is going to change that."

"Promise?"

"I swear, okay?"

I wriggled close to him and hugged him, and he hugged me back, and in that position we fell asleep.

Chapter Six

In fact we were not awakened by an army of singing servants the following morning: instead there was a timid knock on the door, followed by Wolfie rolling into the room and suggesting that, since breakfast would be served in ten minutes, perhaps we ought to think about getting up. Then he withdrew in order to let us get dressed in peace.

We found Lord Folliot, Air Admiral Faulkner and Mr Hall already eating: breakfast was on a self-service basis, as it had been at Squire Cheevers's house, and here there was an even larger selection, including kidneys and kippers. The idea of fish for breakfast didn't really appeal to me, and I can't say that I'd ever thought of eating kidneys on toast either, but I stocked up on everything else and took a seat at the table.

"I'd like you to come to our meeting this morning," my uncle told me. "I know you can't remember anything yet, but at least you'll be able to get an idea of what is happening in Europe. Wolfie, if you could whisper anything Leo doesn't understand in his ear as we go along, that would be helpful. Alex, I don't think that we need to inflict our politics on you, so you may spend the morning as you will. Perhaps you would like to explore the grounds. Luncheon will be at one o'clock, so make sure you're back before then."

I wasn't all that enthusiastic about a morning of politics either, but I supposed this came with the territory, and probably I'd have been trained from an early age in contributing to political discussions. If only I'd been able to remember… still, hopefully Wolfie would nudge me if I looked like falling asleep.

We were just finishing off the toast when Allchorn appeared.

"Our visitors have arrived," he announced. "I have sent the ground crew out."

"Thank you, Allchorn," said Lord Folliot. "I expect you two would like to see this."

He led us outside the house, and I saw a huge airship coming in to land a couple of hundred metres away in the Long Meadow. The only airship I had seen before was an advertising blimp over London, but this was something completely different: it must have been at least a hundred and fifty metres [500 feet] long and thirty-five metres [120 feet] tall. There was a dark line running along the length of the hull about halfway up, and when I borrowed my uncle's telescope I saw that this was a sort of gallery – presumably this could be used by crewmen to shoot at enemy ships.

The tail arrangement was much larger than on the pictures I had seen of the old airships of the Twenties and Thirties, with the two horizontal fins being a bit bigger than the two vertical ones. The bottom fin was cut short, and as the ship came in to land I could see that if it hadn't been shortened it would have hit the ground.

There were two gondolas on the underside of the ship and two smaller ones halfway up the sides just below the gallery, and on top of the ship was something that resembled a gun turret on a modern naval vessel, though this one was quite small.

The whole thing was painted white except for a pale blue circle painted over the nose. This was decorated with yellow dots, which when viewed through the telescope turned out to be a pattern of birds and bees. That almost made me laugh aloud: I wondered if half the crew would turn out to be female – this was a French ship, after all…

But when I asked my uncle why the ship was painted with the birds and the bees, he explained that the birds were eagles, and that bees and eagles together were a symbol of the French Empire.

"Not all of their ships carry them," he went on. "Just the ones named after the earliest of Napoleon the First's marshals. Look a little further back and you'll see which one this is."

So I turned the telescope back to the ship and saw, just behind the nose, a normal French tricolour, and underneath it the name Jean-Baptiste Bessières.

"There you are," said my uncle. "One of the first Napoleon's original marshals. Now we probably ought to go down there and meet them."

By now the nose of the ship had been tethered to the large mast in the centre of the Long Meadow and the ground crew were tying down the other mooring ropes, and by the time we reached the ship – and it looked even bigger close to – the passengers had emerged from the front gondola. I noticed that the ship appeared to be covered in metal, and that there was a network of posts about a meter high all around the hull. These supported what looked like chain link fencing that completely surrounded the hull except on the underside and along the gallery. I guessed that this was an additional defence against rockets.

My uncle did the introductions, and when he introduced me as the duke there were some surprised reactions from the senior French officers, who must therefore have known our family history. We headed back to the house with our guests in tow.

"You might as well escape while the going's good," I suggested quietly to Alex. "You're lucky – I'm probably going to disgrace the family by dropping off while the French are rambling on about la gloire, or whatever they've come to talk about. I'll see you at lunch if I don't die of boredom first."

"Are you sure you'll be okay?"

"No, but there's nothing you can do. Go and enjoy the fresh air."

So he slipped quietly away while I went unenthusiastically to the conference room with my uncle, Wolfie, Air Admiral Faulkner and the two French officers.

***

"So how did it go?" Alex asked me at lunch.

"Not as bad as I'd expected – in fact it was quite useful. I'll give you the short version after we've eaten. I've got the afternoon off, and Wolfie suggests we could go down to the river and get our boat out, and that seems like a good idea. That'll give us plenty of time to talk. So what did you do this morning?"

"Not much. I went for a walk round the garden, got stuck in the maze for almost an hour, and when I finally managed to get out I went and had another look at the airship. I couldn't get too close because there were guards all around it, but it's big. Do you think the one in your dream was like that?"

"I don't know. I'll ask about it later on."

After lunch Alex, Wolfie and I set out to walk down to the river, but Wolfie said that we needed to go via the stables. I didn't understand why, but I kept my mouth shut. I hoped he wasn't going to suggest that we should ride down to the river, because I had no memory of ever having been on a horse in my life (even though I probably had) and I was sure that Alex had never been near one, so I thought the chances of us both getting as far as the river without falling off were minimal. But instead Wolfie wheeled his way into the courtyard and called out for someone called Mr Francis, at which a man emerged from one of the stalls.

"What can I do for you, Master Wolfgang?" he asked.

"Can we borrow one of your boys? We are going to take the boat out."

"Certainly. Rodgers!"

Out of another stall came a boy who looked about our age, or maybe a year or so younger. He was skinny and untidy-looking – he had straw in his blond hair, for a start, though maybe that was hard to avoid if you were working in a stables all day long.

"You're in luck," Mr Francis told him. "Master Wolfgang and his friends need a stoker, so you won't need to muck out the east boxes after all. And mind you behave yourself – this one is the duke, and he pays all our wages!"

He turned to me. "I understand that you can't remember anything that happened before we lost you," he said. "Well, I hope you recover soon. It'll be good to have the rightful master back."

I mumbled something that I hoped was appropriate – words like 'master' sounded a bit odd when applied to myself.

Mr Francis headed back for his box. The boy Rodgers gave a clumsy bow and looked at me nervously.

"I do not think you have crewed for me before, have you?" asked Wolfie, and the boy shook his head.

"No, my Lord," he said. "But I know how to operate a firebox and boiler. Mr Francis teaches all of us how to do that."

"Good. Then we can leave you to deal with the boiler. You know where the boathouse is? No? Well, just follow the path from the bottom corner of the Long Meadow and it will take you right there. Here is the key. It is the smaller boat – just run on ahead and get the box lit. You will find some lucifers in the cupboard beside the firebox."

The boy scampered away and we followed at a more leisurely pace. We stopped at the top of the meadow to watch Bessières take off, and it looked beautiful as it climbed into the sky. I could see two more airships circling above it, which I assumed were waiting to escort it back across the Channel, and indeed in due course they formed up one on each side of it and they flew off – surprisingly quickly: I'd always thought that airships were slow and cumbersome – towards the south.

"So what were you and those French types talking about this morning?" Alex asked.

"Ah. Well, first of all, it's the Russians we're fighting, so you were right: that eagle is the symbol of the Tsar. There's still a tsar here, France is an empire ruled by Napoleon's descendants, and Germany doesn't exist. There is a confederation of smaller states and five kingdoms making up what we call Germany – the most important one is Prussia, which Wolfie might be king of one day. But right now the whole of Germany is occupied by the Tsar. The French army is too strong for him to be able to cross the Rhine, and the British navy – our surface navy – is too strong for him to risk a seaborne invasion. But he has a powerful air force, and that's where both we and the French are at risk. The French ships are good, but the Russians are better because they have discovered some sort of very light but extremely strong alloy to armour their ships with.

"Obviously the problem with airships is that they need to be as light as possible, and once you start putting armour all over them it gets harder and harder to make them fast and manoeuvrable., and if your armour is too thick it won't get off the ground at all. So most allied ships only have minimal armour. That makes us, at least in theory, slightly faster than the Eagles, but we're vulnerable to their rockets, because obviously if your ship uses hydrogen for lift… well, you get the picture. We try to limit the risk by using different gas sections, with sections that use steam between the hydrogen cells, but that reduces our lifting power.

"The other problem is that our government doesn't have the money to support a large air fleet as well as the surface one, and so our air navy is quite limited. They got around the problem by licensing members of the aristocracy, or anyone else who can afford it, to build and fly their own ships, and that's what our family has done. We operate as privateers, but we don't each do our own thing: instead we co-operate with our navy and, more often, the French navy. If we happen to intercept Russian trade ships we're at liberty to help ourselves to their cargo and any other valuables, but that's merely in theory, because for the last five years we've been too busy trying to keep the Eagles out of our airspace to try to make any money out of it.

"This morning was one of the regular meetings we have with the French, and Air Admiral Faulkner was really only there as an observer, because the British air force doesn't operate outside British airspace, whereas we and the other privateers often do.

"The most important thing is that the French think they've cracked the problem of the Russian armour: their scientists have been working for some time on the armour taken from a shot-down Eagle, but they were getting nowhere because there's an element in the alloy that they couldn't identify. But now they know why: one of their spies has found out that the unknown element comes from meteors. Apparently a lot of them have been striking in Siberia, and the Russians have been extracting their mystery element from them. So all we have to do if find a meteor and we'll be able to analyse the element for ourselves, and maybe then we'll be able to match the Eagles' armour."

"Oh, right," said Alex. "So we just go and stand on Salisbury Plain and wait for a meteor to land on us, then?"

"That's pretty much what I said. But it seems that these things strike the Earth a lot more often than I thought. The only problem is that they tend to land inside or close to the Arctic Circle."

"Last time I looked, that was a very long way north of even the Shetlands."

"True. But there's always Greenland. We'd be on slightly rocky ground legally if we went after one there, because strictly Greenland is a protected territory, which means that nobody is supposed to go there: it's meant to be a place where its own native people can live in peace. But there aren't many of them, and if we were to send an expedition there we could probably avoid too much interaction with the natives. Of course when I say 'We' I don't mean us personally: it would mean a land expedition, and that would probably be undertaken by the French government. But we might be asked to provide air cover to protect their ships on the way there.

"Anyway, Sir Neil is going to ensure that our astronomers track any meteor entering the atmosphere from now on. At least it gives us some sort of hope of an improvement in the odds in future."

By now we were in the wood, which was nice, because it was quite a hot day and here under the trees we had some shade. We had to stop at one point to wind up Wolfie's chair, though it didn't seem to need it too often, so perhaps I shouldn't have been quite so dismissive of clockwork after all. I suppose that if you don't have petrol engines or electricity you learn to optimise whatever technology you do have.

The path led straight to a large boathouse which held two vessels. I supposed that the larger one had been owned by my father, which probably made it mine now, but the smaller one was still plenty big enough for us. It was around ten metres [30 feet] long and actually looked fairly conventional, with only the funnel towards the stern to suggest that this wasn't an ordinary motor vessel.

"Who's Lady Renée Ocuto?" I asked, reading the name around the stern. A glance at the larger vessel revealed the name Lady Caroline, and that was obviously my mother, but who was Lady Renée? 'Ocuto' sounded vaguely Italian, or Spanish, or maybe Portuguese, but I had no memory of anyone like that.

"Do you not remember?" asked Wolfie. "When your parents first gave her to you we spent ages trying to decide what to call her. At first we were thinking of Lord Abingdon, which was your title before you became the Duke, but that seemed too boring. And ships – except for warships – are not supposed to have male names, either.

"Then we thought it would be fun to make up a name using the letters from your own name. We started with 'Duke of Culham', but we could do no better than Lame Duck, and that did not use all the letters. And so we tried… what do you think?"

I looked at Lady Renée Ocuto and juggled letters, but Alex got there first.

"It's an anagram of 'Leo de Courtenay', isn't it?" he said.

"It is," Wolfie confirmed. "We argued for a while about the last name: at first we were going to choose 'Couto', but in the end we thought that was too close to 'Courtenay'. So your boat has a female name, but really it is named after you."

"How appropriate," said Alex, grinning at me.

I ignored him and walked onto the landing-stage, wondering if Lame Duck might be more appropriate for a boy who finds he's a duke but doesn't remember how to behave like one.

There was a ramp that had obviously been built specially for Wolfie because it ended flush with the deck, so he was able to roll straight up it without having to worry about steps. There was an open sun deck and a full cabin deck below, the rear third or so being an engine-room. Here we found the stable boy Rodgers with a shovel in his hand, though he wasn't actually shovelling when we entered the room.

"Steam's building, Your Grace," he said to me. "Another twenty minutes or so, I should say, and we'll be ready to move."

"Thank you, Rodgers," I said. "But please don't call me 'your grace' – I know I'm supposed to be the duke, but I have no memories of it, so being treated like one makes me feel weird. Did anyone warn you about my amnesia?"

"Your what, Your… I mean, my Lord?"

"Amnesia. It means I can't remember anything about when I lived here before."

"Oh. Well, yes, my Lord: Mr Francis told us all that you're back with us but that you've lost your memory. But he said as how we have to treat you exactly as we used to after your father died, God rest him, because eventually you'll remember again, and then we'll be in trouble if we show disrespect."

"Oh, did he?"

"Yes, my Lord."

"And what do you call Wolfie?"

"Who, my Lord?"

"The Margrave of Brandenburg-Bayreuth."

"Oh! Well, the adults used to call him Master Wolfgang, my Lord, but now as he's getting older Mr Francis wasn't sure what we should call him. I'm afraid as I don't know how to address a German lord, my Lord."

"Alright, that's enough! When anyone else is around I suppose you'll have to stick to the proper titles – call Wolfie 'Excellency' or something – but just for today, while it's just the four of us, I want you to drop all the titles completely, okay? My name is Leo, and the Margrave is Wolfie, and that's Alex. What's your first name?"

"Billy, my Lord."

"No, Billy, not 'my Lord', okay? Just call me Leo."

The boy looked thoroughly uncomfortable. "But, my Lord, that wouldn't be right!" he protested. "I know my place, and the likes of me can't go about calling the masters by their given names! It's just not… proper!"

"But…"

But Wolfie interrupted me. "I am sorry, Leo, but he is right," he said. "Perhaps in the world you have come from this is not so, but here there is a structure for society, and it works best if we all stick to our assigned places in it."

"Well, that's easy for you to say," I argued. "You're right at the top of the pile. Of course it's easy to want to keep things as they are when you have everything you could ever ask for, but it's not so easy when you're at the bottom of the heap."

"That is unfair," said Wolfie. "My status is not so perfect: my parents are dead and I have no country. And if you think it is easy to rule, then truly you have forgotten everything you have been taught. On your decision will hang many lives, the lives of those who trust you and look to you for protection. In five years, perhaps Billy will serve on your ship, and he will live or die according to the choices you make. His life is far simpler than ours, and many, many times I have wished that I was only a stable boy myself."

"Yes, but… hell, Wolfie, I didn't mean to say that you've had it easy. After all, my parents are dead too, so I know how that feels – and at least you can remember yours. But it just seems wrong to me that the difference between us – you and me – and him is so great. Tell me, Billy, what did you have for breakfast this morning?"

"Porridge, my Lord," he said. "And today there was some left-over bacon, too. Cook makes fine porridge, and there is usually enough for seconds."

"And where do you live?"

"In the stables with the other lads, my… Sir."

"Ah. Are you an orphan, then?"

"No – my ma works in the kitchen, and my father worked in the gardens, before he went for a sailor at Easter. But it's easier for ma and me to sleep near our work, so she has a room in the house and I sleep with the other lads. Of course, I see her every day, and when my dad comes home perhaps we'll be able to move into one of the cottages again."

"And – please answer this honestly, Billy – are you content with your life?"

"Well, of course, Sir. I have a bed and I'm well-fed, and Mr Francis is a fair master. I've no reason to be unhappy."

"And what do you want to do when you are older?"

"I hardly know, Sir. I've not thought about it – after all, I'm only thirteen. I'd be happy to continue where I am, but obviously if Your Grace needs me in some other job I would be happy to do whatever you ask of me."

"As long as it doesn't include calling me 'Leo', eh? But suppose you could choose. What would you most like to do?"

"Well… it would be presumptuous to say, my Lord…"

"Go on, Billy, be presumptuous. Consider that an order, if you like."

"Well… maybe one day… I'd like to join the crew of Excalibur, Sir."

"What's Excalibur?" I asked.

"It is Uncle Gil's ship – æthership, I mean," explained Wolfie.

"Ah. So you'd like to fly, Billy?"

"Yes, Sir."

"Then if I become her captain one day I shall arrange it. What job could you do on an airship, though? There aren't any horses on board."

"I could be a stoker," he said, opening the firebox and adding a shovel of coal from the hopper to his right. "I already know how to tend a firebox."

I hadn't realised that the airships were steam-powered, but now that I thought about it I supposed they had to be, since there were no petrol engines or electricity here. Somehow a clockwork airship seemed even less likely than a steam-driven one.

Billy checked a gauge above the firebox.

"Another ten minutes, my Lord," he said.

At that point I was ready to give up: apparently I was going to have to get used to people addressing me as 'your grace' and 'my lord' all the time, whether I liked it or not. But I was forgetting that I had a very useful ally.

"Could you teach me how to do that?" Alex asked Billy. "I don't know how long I'm going to be here, but it would be good if I can learn to do something useful, and since steam is the number one source of energy round here, learning how to look after a boiler has to be a good thing to know."

"But… you can't do manual work!" protested Billy.

"Yes, I can. I'm not an aristo, Billy – I'm working class, same as you. I come from a back street in North London, and when I leave school I'll probably end up in a manual job of some sort. My father's a builder. So perhaps while the Margrave and the Duke go and sit in the cabin you could show me how to tend a firebox properly."

At the same time he waved us away. I thought he had a far better chance of persuading Billy to stop grovelling than I did, so I helped Wolfie through into the main cabin – he'd had to leave his chair on deck, of course – and we sat down, out of sight of the firebox but still in earshot, because I had deliberately left the door between us open.

"So, is it just a question of shovelling in a load of coal now and again?" asked Alex.

"No, you can't just shovel it in any old how. The aim is to keep the box at the best temperature. See that gauge? The needle needs to be inside that small green arc. That heats the water as efficiently as possible, otherwise you're just wasting coal. Now, when the needle on this other gauge reaches that red line we'll have enough steam to go. Once we're running it only needs more coal now and again, so it's not too difficult a job – at least, not on a boat this size. The big navy boats have a whole line of furnaces, though, and my dad says as how it gets proper hot in their engine room."

"Is your dad a stoker, then?"

"No, he's a gunner's mate, but he's been down in the engine room. He says at least you don't get cold down there, not even in winter, but it's a bad place to be if the ship is hit. It takes a while to get up onto the deck, and if the ship sinks quickly… so if I ever join the navy I'd sooner have a deck job. Of course, I'd sooner fly… do you think His Grace meant it about getting me a job on Excalibur when he becomes captain?"

"Leo never breaks his word," said Alex. "I'd trust him with my life."

"I'd love to fly," said Billy, dreamily. "To see the Earth spread out underneath you – that must be the best thing ever. Anyway, time for some more coal – the needle's on the edge of the arc, see? Open the door and then watch how I do it, and then next time you can have a go."

There were some noises indicating the transfer of coal, and then the firebox door clanged shut again.

"So how come you're with the duke if you're just working class?" asked Billy. "If you don't mind me asking, of course."

"Not at all. See, after the crash four years ago Leo got a bang on the head and he somehow stumbled through a hole between worlds – we still don't know how it happened, but we're going to try to find out – and he ended up in mine. And he couldn't remember anything at all, so he had no idea he was a duke and nobody else knew either. So they put him in an orphanage, and then later he got adopted by this couple who live near me in London. He started going to my school, which is where we met, and we became friends, and we've been friends for the past three years.

"Then I got into trouble and wanted to get out of London for a bit, and he said he didn't want me to be on my own, and so he came with me. We came here – well, to Wiltshire – because he wanted to try to find out where he came from, and I suppose that we fell through the same hole that he did four years ago. So here we are, only he still can't remember anything about this world at all, which is why he isn't behaving very dukily, if that's a word."

"I don't think it is… but I suppose I can understand why it feels strange to him. If someone suddenly told me as I was a duke I wouldn't have any idea of what to do."

"Exactly. Everyone says he'll get his memory back, and when he does he probably won't need me any more, but until then I'm going to go on being his friend, even if people like me aren't really supposed to be friends with people like him."

That was more than enough for me. I got up and went back into the engine-room.

"I'm never going to stop needing you," I told him. "For a start, if I go mad with power and start acting really stupidly I'm counting on you to hit me over the head and stop me."

"It'll be a pleasure!" said Alex, grinning.

"But you see what my problem is, Billy," I went on. "If people all started calling you 'My Lord' and stuff like that you'd feel a bit strange too, wouldn't you?"

"Well, yes, but they won't because I'm not an aristocrat. You are – it's just that you can't remember about it yet."

"I know, and when I do remember I don't think it'll be a problem at all. But until I remember I'm going to need some help. I've got my uncle and Wolfie to tell me what other members of the ruling class expect from me, but I really need someone from the other side to tell me what the working class expect from me. Alex can't do it because he doesn't come from this world… but you could. So will you help me? If I start doing something that would upset the people who work for me, will you tell me?"

"Well… it isn't for the likes of me to tell you what to do," he replied, still looking uncomfortable.

I thought for a moment. "Suppose I was blind and I asked you to guide me along a path," I said. "You'd do that, wouldn't you?"

"Well… probably you'd have a servant to do that… but if there was nobody else, of course I would."

"And if Wolfie's chair broke down you'd help him too, wouldn't you?"

"Well, yes."

"Well, this is just like that. I'm sort of blind about how this world works. I'm going to be cured, but until I am I need help, and you can definitely help me. You won't be telling me what to do, just warning me quietly if I look like doing something the workers won't like. And because we're the same age people will understand if I recruit you temporarily to my personal staff – officially you'll be my stoker or runner or whatever else we need, but really you'd be my adviser. Could you do that?"

"Well, yes, my Lord, of course. I'll do whatever you tell me to."

"But you're not happy about it? Be honest!"

"Well… actually I think it would be really interesting, but I'm only a stable boy and I wouldn't know how to behave in front of a lot of important folk."

"I won't ask you to do that. As far as possible the only 'important folk' you'll be with will be me and Wolfie."

"And I'll be there too," put in Alex, "so you won't be the only normal person there."

"Then I'll do my best, my Lord."

"Thank you. But… if you're going to be with us a lot, please will you try not to call me anything nobby? I know it's not proper for you to call me Leo, but it'll make me feel much better if you can."

"But…"

"I tell you what," said Alex. "Every time you hear me call him 'Your dukiness' or whatever, you can do it too. Fair?"

"Well…"

"Just when we're on our own," I pressed. "In public you can bow and scrape all you want, but when it's just us, please don't. It makes me feel weird."

"Well… all right, then, my… I mean… Leo," he said, with an effort.

"Great! So – are we ready to go?"

He looked at the gauge. "Yes, I think so, my…ahem," he said. "Alex, do you want to put another shovel of coal in?"

Alex took the shovel, opened the door, collected some coal from the hopper and flung it into the firebox, and Billy burst out laughing.

"You're too strong!" he said, when he recovered. "That's gone all the way to the back of the box, look! Do it again, and try to get the coal to land in a proper layer."

So Alex tried again.

"That's a bit better," said Billy. "Now if you'd like to release the mooring lines, my… gosh, this is difficult… Leo, we can get under way."

"Do not forget to open the boathouse door!" came Wolfie's voice from the cabin. "Help me up on deck and I will show you."

So we all went up on deck and Wolfie showed me the handle that raised the boathouse door, and while Alex undid the mooring lines and pulled up the ramp I opened the door. There was a step by the door, and by waiting on it I was able to jump aboard as the boat passed me.

Wolfie had taken the wheel, and as we emerged from the boathouse he turned left, taking us downstream. I went and joined him in the wheelhouse, and Alex, after watching the shore slip slowly by for a couple of minutes, went back below to join Billy in the engine room.

After we had been going for about fifteen minutes we came to a fork in the river, and Wolfie took the narrower left fork.

"Where does the other arm go?" I asked.

"Into Abingdon. But this is our own private cut – it is still on our estate, and other shipping does not use it. And that is useful, because just down here is the place where we used to go swimming… see that large tree on the left? That is where we used to tie up."

He angled the boat into the bank and set the telegraph to idle, briefly setting it to reverse as we drew level with the tree. I jumped ashore, and Alex came up on deck and threw me the mooring lines, which I made fast to the tree. Wolfie called down to Billy, asking him to close his dampers and bank up, because we were going to be here for a while.

"Do you remember anything?" Wolfie asked me.

I looked at the big tree, but nothing stirred. "Sorry," I said.

"Oh, well… it is a nice warm day, so let us go for a swim anyway."

"Ah. But… I didn't bring my swimming stuff."

"You do not seriously think we actually wore anything when we went swimming, do you?"

"Well, now that you mention it… and it is quite hot today…"

"Good. Alex, could you and Leo set out the ramp, please?"

So we set the ramp and then went down to the cabin to get undressed. As I'd sort of expected, Billy was reluctant to join us, saying that he ought to stay on board and keep an eye on the firebox.

"Sod that!" said Alex. "It's damned hot in there, and outside there's a lot of nice cool water. I'm certainly going in, and if I am, you can, too. Except… you can swim, I suppose?"

"Of course I can! It's just… Oh, all right, then. You're right – it is too hot back there."

That was easier than I'd thought. I'm not sure whether Alex was being a good example to him or a bad one, but as far as getting him to join in with us went, it seemed to be working. We all stripped to our underwear, and then I helped Wolfie to remove his leg, and he didn't seem at all worried about the other two seeing his condition.

"Doesn't that hurt?" Billy asked him looking at the stump curiously.

"Sometimes, if I walk too far. And sometimes my foot itches, even though it is not there any more. That feels really strange… but most of the time it is fine."

"And can you swim like that?" I asked.

"Well enough. It is obviously not as good as having two feet, but I can manage."

"What you need," said Billy, "is another pretend leg, only instead of having a foot at the end it has a propeller, with a clockwork motor inside the leg. You'd be able to swim faster than anyone then."

"That is an amazing idea!" said Wolfie. "I will have to see if I can get someone to make me one. The only problem would be that I would have to take it off before I got out of the water, but I do not see why I could not do that… Thank you, Billy."

Wolfie wriggled out of his underwear, and Alex and I did the same. Billy hesitated for a moment, but then took a deep breath and pulled his briefs off. What followed was quite interesting: everyone started checking everybody else out quite openly. If I'd acted like that in the changing room at school I'd probably have got my head kicked in, but here nobody seemed to care, so I was quite happy to join in. Billy was the only one I hadn't seen before, of course, and he was surprisingly big, given that he was younger than the rest of us: his equipment was probably almost as big as Alex's, even though Billy didn't seem to have any hair yet. Alex seemed intrigued by the colour of Wolfie's pubes, and Wolfie and Billy were both obviously impressed with what Alex had to offer.

"Wow, that's really… grown-up," commented Billy, staring.

"It certainly is," agreed Wolfie. "How old are you, Alex?"

"I was fourteen about four weeks ago."

"That makes you about ten weeks younger than me," said Wolfie. "But you look much older. You look good."

"I like the colour of your hair," Alex replied, "and I think it'll look even better outside, because I think the sun will make it sort of glint. Shall we go and find out?"

I helped Wolfie to his feet, grateful that nobody had seen fit to make fun of me, because mine was clearly the smallest one there, even though all of the others were younger than me. Getting up the stairs onto the deck was tricky because Wolfie now only had one leg, but we got there in the end. And Alex was right about the way Wolfie's pubes caught the sun, too.

The next half-hour or so was a lot of fun: we jumped from the boat straight into the river and then splashed about, chasing each other, ducking each other, throwing each other into the air – Alex did the best job there – racing and diving and so on. A step had been cut into the bank just past the point where the boat was moored, and that made it easy to get out, run along the bank, up the ramp and then dive from the ship's rail once more. It took Billy a while to enter fully into things, but eventually he threw off his inhibitions and just enjoyed himself.

Wolfie, of course, couldn't manage out of the water on his own – or not without crawling, anyway – so we took it in turns to help him whenever he wanted to return to the boat for another dive. But in the water he managed perfectly well.

Eventually we got out of the river, dried ourselves off – Wolfie had thoughtfully brought four towels with him, tucked into the pocket on the back of his chair – and then lay on the bank in the sun for a while. This was very relaxing, and I had just about fallen asleep when something wet and slimy landed on my face, jolting me awake in an instant. I snatched at my face and found a piece of water-weed across it, and when I had clawed it away I saw Alex leaning over me and grinning.

"Oh, you are so dead!" I told him, grabbing his ankles and tripping him up.

I've never yet won a wrestling match with Alex, and I didn't look like winning this one either: he soon had me pinned down and squirming uselessly. But then he got off me, went over to where Billy was sitting up watching us, and tapped him on the shoulder.

"Tag!" he said. "Go on, Billy, take over for me. Chuck him in the river!"

"You can try," I said, when Billy hesitated, "but you'll be the one who gets wet!"

Billy took the challenge and jumped on me, and we wrestled for a while. This was a much more even bout: I was older, slightly taller and a little heavier, but he was tougher than me because he was used to manual work, and eventually he managed to get on top and stay there.

"You wait," I said. "If I can get my hand free I'll pull your balls off!"

"Oh, so you want to fight dirty?" He rolled me over so that I was face down, pulled one of my arms far enough up behind my back to be painful, and then, just as I was thinking of submitting anyway, he wriggled his other hand underneath me and seized my balls.

"Stand up," he ordered. "And don't struggle unless you want to lose something important!"

So I stood up carefully, making no attempt to struggle – he was already holding my balls quite tightly. He marched me up the ramp and to the ship's rail, and then just as I was thinking he wouldn't actually do it, he let go of my balls and pushed, and I ended up in the river. I'd been quite warm, first from sunbathing and then from my exertions wrestling, and so this time the water felt positively cold.

I splashed my way to the bank and scrambled onto dry ground, and Wolfie tossed my towel to me. I took it gratefully and started to dry myself. Meanwhile Billy came back down the ramp and looked at me a little apprehensively.

"Sorry," he said. "I shouldn't have done that."

"Of course you should," I told him. "I threatened to do it to you first, and maybe next time I will. It was a fair fight, so you shouldn't apologise for winning – even if it was pure luck."

"Was it, hell!" he replied. "I'm just stronger than you. Although it's probably because I get a lot of practice: us stable lads spend a lot of time wrestling, and some of the others fight dirty, too, so I'm used to it. You were easy compared to some of them!"

"Yeah? Want a rematch?"

"Any time!"

"But not now," interrupted Wolfie. "We ought to be getting back. Could you help me back on board?"

So we went back on board and got dressed, and Billy went to get the fire going and to raise steam once more. It was a lot quicker this time because the fire was already hot, and so in the time it took us to finish getting dressed, untie the mooring lines and get the ramp back on board the boiler was almost ready. Wolfie went back to the wheel and Alex went to continue his lesson from Billy, and I just sat next to Wolfie and watched as he turned the boat round and headed back the way we had come.

When we were about halfway back I went below to see how Alex was doing. It was really quite hot in the engine room and both Alex and Billy had their shirts off, and I thought once more how good Alex looked, especially with a sheen of sweat on his chest…. I shook the thought aside and looked at Billy instead, who was a lot skinnier: like me his chest seemed to be mostly skin and ribs. There was no question that he had some strength, though.

"I just came to say 'Thank you'," I said to him. "Thanks for joining in with us, even if it made you feel a bit uncomfortable."

He shrugged. "Actually it was fun," he said. "I just told myself it was like being out playing with three of the other lads, and then it wasn't too difficult."

"So you think you'll be able to do that sort of thing again?"

"I'm sure I will".

"Great! Mind you, next time we fight I'm definitely going to win… what are you laughing at, Ox-man?"

"He'll kill you every time," said Alex, grinning at me. "He's got muscles where you've got flab."

"Oh, has he? We'll see!"

"More coal," said Billy. "Keep watching the gauge, Alex – you can talk to someone without losing sight of what you're here for."

Alex added a shovel of coal to the firebox, and this time Billy seemed satisfied with his effort.

"You'd better sleep at the stables tonight," I said to Billy. "I'll try to sort you out a room in the house from tomorrow, though. It shouldn't be a problem: there are quite a few empty ones – unless you'd prefer to stay with your friends, of course?"

"No, I think I'd like to find out what it's like to have a room to myself," he said. "It'll make a change to get away from sleeping next to Tommy Green. He snores. With a bit of luck Mr Francis will give that bed to someone else, and then when I come back I'll be a nice long way away from him."

We reached the boathouse and Wolfie gave an impressive display of helmsmanship by reversing perfectly into position against the dock. We tied up, waited while Billy made the boiler and firebox safe and then locked up and walked through the wood and back up the Long Meadow to the house. We said goodbye to Billy by the stables, promising him that we'd come and find him as soon as we had arranged a room for him, and then we walked on to the house to get ready for supper.

In my room I found some clothes laid out on the bed, including a full evening suit, and when Alex went through to his room he found a similar set waiting for him. Since nobody had yet taken our measurements I had no idea how the clothes had been ordered, but when we got down to supper, formally attired – and I had no recollection of ever having worn a bow tie before, so Wolfie had to tie mine, and Alex's, for us – my uncle said that this was purely a temporary arrangement: the suit I was wearing was one of Wolfie's – he had more than one, of course – and the one Alex was wearing had belonged to Lord Brookhampton's eldest son, who had outgrown it.

"We'll get you measured for some proper clothes tomorrow," my uncle told us. "But at least these will keep you going in the short term. Leo, we're also going to have to think about a flying uniform for you. You probably can't remember this, but the rule for officers on privateers is basically to wear something in which you feel comfortable. We don't generally wear the same sort of uniform as the naval officers do: you're more or less free to design something yourself. Of course if you want to wear a uniform, that's fine, but it shouldn't look like those worn by the regular naval officers. Talk it over with Wolfie later, if you like."

"Am I going to be flying soon, then?" I asked.

"Perhaps. If you can't remember anything from your earlier flights we need to get you used to it again fairly quickly. I'll certainly want you with us if we find ourselves taking part in an expedition to Greenland."

"Right. But… you haven't forgotten about us wanting to try to find the way to get back to our world, have you?"

"No, and I'll make the auto-carriage available to you whenever you want to do that. But… you're not intending to leave us again, I hope."

I shook my head. "This is where I belong. Clearly it's my duty to stay, but even if it wasn't I think I would want to, even without any memory of the past. But Alex needs to be able to get home. Even if he eventually decides to stay here with me – and we haven't even discussed that yet – he has a family in London, and he can't simply vanish without telling them where he's gone. I need to get a message to my foster-parents, too, come to that."

"Of course. Just let me know what you want to do and I will arrange it."

When I went to help Wolfie with his leg that night – and I decided to continue to 'massage' it myself: I didn't want Alex to suddenly start grabbing Wolfie's bum the way he had mine – I asked if we would be able to get hold of some spare bedding.

"Tomorrow night I'd like it if you and I could sleep upstairs," I said. "I seriously think that being with you in that room overnight would help me to remember stuff."

"Of course, and I would like very much to do that, even if you do not regain your memories. Leo, what you told Uncle Gil tonight, about staying here… you did mean it, yes?"

I nodded. "Of course it would be easier if I could remember," I said, "but even if I can't, I think this is where I belong. If you can be King of Prussia with one leg, I can be Duke of Culham with no memory. Except… I've been wondering: I've been missing for a very long time. How come Uncle Gil didn't just have me declared dead? That way he could have claimed the title for himself."

Wolfie stared at me. "He would never have done that! Even if ten years had gone by, or twenty, you would still have been the rightful duke until we knew for certain that you were dead. Nobody would try to steal another's title or position. Is there no concept of honour where you have been living?"

"Well, not much of one, I don't think," I said, thinking of the riots.

"Then clearly I shall have to teach you how important it is. And I have a way to do that which I will show you tomorrow."

I helped him into bed and said goodnight and then went back to my room, where Alex was waiting for me: we'd decided that we'd stay together for sleeping purposes at least until we knew if it would be possible to return to his world.

"What with all that swimming today, I'm sure you could use a massage," he suggested.

"I'm sure I could," I agreed, and I got undressed very quickly indeed. So did he, and that made it even more interesting, especially when I was lying on my back and so was in a position to see him. It was obvious – more than five inches' [12 cm] worth of obvious – that he was enjoying the experience, and so this time when I got an erection myself it didn't bother me at all. And when he had finished the actual massage he lay down beside me, pulling the covers over us, and rubbed me in a wonderful, slow and sensuous way, making it last for absolutely ages. Afterwards I insisted on doing it for him too, and this time he didn't argue, just letting me get on with it. I don't know if I did it half as well as he did, but he certainly seemed to enjoy it.

Once he'd been to dispose of the evidence he turned out the light, got back into bed and pulled me close to him, and I snuggled up to him contentedly.

"Alex," I asked, after a bit, "what are you going to do about going home?"

"I don't know. I think it could be a really interesting life here. Your family seems to be loaded – at least, if it can afford to build and fly its own airships it must be – and I think I'd get to do loads of stuff here I could never do at home – like flying in an airship, for a start. But… well, I've got a family, haven't I? I'd hate it if I never saw my parents again, or my sis, even if she is a pain sometimes. It's different for you: I know you really liked your uncle and aunt, but… well, they weren't your real parents, were they?"

"No, but I'd still really miss them if I never saw them again. Okay, I meant what I said earlier about staying here, but I'd still like a chance to go and say goodbye to Auntie Megan and Uncle Jim first. I suppose what we really need is to find that the hole between worlds is permanent, because that way we could come and go whenever we want. But I don't suppose it can be, because otherwise people would know about it, on both sides."

"Oh, well, we'll just have to wait and see, I suppose. Another thing: I was wondering whether Wolfie picked Billy to come with us today because he hoped I'd start fancying Billy, and that would stop me getting between you and him."

"I'm sure he didn't. First, Wolfie doesn't know you're gay – I certainly haven't told him so, anyway. Second, after what he said to me half an hour ago I think he would consider doing something sneaky like that dishonourable. And third, he didn't pick Billy – Mr Francis did, remember? He might have picked a complete troll, so it was pure chance we ended up with a blondie like Billy."

"I suppose so. Actually I think we got lucky there: he is easy to look at, but more important, he's a nice kid, and when he got over his class problem and started joining in properly he was fun to be with. And I enjoyed watching him beat you up, too!"

"He was just lucky – although I'll grant you that he's got some strength. I think 'wiry' is probably the word. But next time I'll grab those big balls of his before he can get hold of mine, and then we'll see who's best."

"You'll be lucky! Mind you, they are quite big, aren't they? They're at least as big as yours, and of course his knob is twice the size… aargh!"

I'd grabbed his balls and given them a quick squeeze.

"You're welcome to go and sleep with him, if you think he's so much better than me," I suggested.

"Don't be stupid. He could be built like a Greek god – and we Greeks know all about gods – and hung like a horse, and I'd still stick with you every time. We're a team, remember?"

"Good," I said, letting go. "And don't you forget it."

And I snuggled up to him and went to sleep.

Chapter Seven

After breakfast the following morning we were measured for our new clothing by a man with several tape measures and a fussy manner, who measured almost every possible dimension on my body… well, not that one, but certainly all the others, including my head. I wondered if there were particular occasions on which I'd be required to wear a hat, and I can't say I liked the idea, because I simply didn't like wearing anything on my head. I must have been the only boy in our class who didn't own a baseball cap.

When the tailor had finally finished with us we were able to go and talk to Allchorn, who was in charge of the staff, about borrowing Billy Rodgers indefinitely to act as my personal runner and assistant. Allchorn wondered aloud if one of the indoor staff might not be a better choice, but I said that we'd spent much of the previous afternoon interviewing Rodgers and giving him some practical tests, such as checking his ability to tend a firebox, and were happy with the results, and at that the butler gave way. He agreed to ask Mrs Sweeting to make up a room for him in the servants' quarters on the third floor.

Towards the end of the morning Wolfie said that he wanted to go up to our private headquarters with me. He'd managed to get hold of some bedding – I didn't ask how, but I assumed he'd been busy while Alex and I were being catalogued by the tailor – and he wanted me to help him make the bed. But he didn't want Alex along, because we had never let anyone else know about our special room, and he didn't want that to change now.

I wasn't really happy about that.

"Alex is my friend," I said. "Sooner or later we're going to have to tell him – I won't be able to keep disappearing without him wanting to know where I am, especially if we're intending to stay there overnight. Surely you know by now that we can trust him?"

"Of course I do, but it is not about trust, it is about us having somewhere which is just for the two of us. If only you had your memory you would know how important that was."

"But I don't suppose we had any other particular friend back then – or did we?"

"Well… not quite like you and Alex are friends, no," he admitted. "Still…"

"Well, look," I said, "I'll agree to keep it between ourselves for a little longer. But I don't like having secrets from Alex, and if we shut him out he's going to feel really bad. That's not fair on him. Anyway, I want us to be friends, all three of us. So we'll sleep there tonight, and maybe again at the weekend, but I want to tell him about it next week, all right?"

"Well… I suppose so. Can he speak German?"

"Ah. No, but we'll teach him. You taught me pretty well: on the last day before I came back to this world I was talking to some boys from Trier in Germany, and they said I sounded almost like a genuine German."

"I am surprised they would know," said Wolfie. "Trier is not in Germany – in fact it is not caller Trier, either: that is a very old name for it. It is called Trèves, and it has been in France for about two hundred years. It is in the département of Forêts, I think… or possibly Sarre. I am not quite sure where the border is."

"Oh. Well, in my world… I mean, my other world, it's in Germany, and it has been since about 1816, I would guess. Anyway, they were native Germans, and they liked my accent. We'll just have to teach Alex as well as you taught me."

So when Alex returned from using the plumbing I asked him to go to the stables and find Billy and to bring him up to my room. I said we'd meet them there in about twenty minutes, which I thought would give us long enough to make the bed in our third-floor room.

We made our way up to the third floor room, and there I saw that Wolfie had been busy: the room had been tidied up, the dust covers had been removed, and the twin paintings were back above the fireplace.

"Hmmm," I commented, contemplating the lop-sided eagle. "Maybe we ought to think about re-doing those."

"The idea was not to have them looking perfect," he replied. "Had we wanted that we could have obtained professional pictures. Instead we wanted to do it ourselves – a picture has far greater meaning if it is personal."

"I suppose so. And of course we were probably a lot less critical when we were ten."

There was a pile of bedding on one of the chairs, so we set to work and soon had the bed made.

"Did we sleep up here a lot?" I asked.

"Not very often. It was hard to sneak away because the adults liked to know where we were. But we did manage to get a night here occasionally. It should be easier now, because we are older, so they will not watch us so closely."

"I've been wondering," I said. "Your English is really good, and your accent is too, apart from an occasional hint of a 'v' when a word starts with 'w'. So… why don't you use contractions?"

"Why… what?"

"Contractions. Just now you said 'because we are older, so they will not watch us', or something. Why not say 'Because we're older, so they won't watch us so closely'?"

"I was taught that is a lazy way to speak, and that as a member of the nobility I have to set an example, and so speak very correct English."

"Well, I suppose that's true if you're making a formal speech about something important, but it sounds dead weird if you're talking to me or Alex. I change the way I speak depending who I'm talking to – so when I was speaking to the French officers yesterday I was very formal, but when we were splashing about in the river I was very informal. You don't have to talk like a stuffed shirt all the time, you know."

"What is… Sorry. What's a stuffed shirt?"

"That's better! It's a pompous sort of prig who thinks he's God's gift."

"I only understood 'pompous' there – but I do not want… don't want to sound pompous. I… I'll try to talk like you and Alex from now on if you think that would be better."

"I do, much better. So let's go downstairs and give you some practice."

We got to my room before Alex and Billy, but only by thirty seconds or so.

"So what did your friends think about you coming to work in the house?" I asked Billy.

"I didn't tell them. I just said as how I'd been asked to report to the house for a day or so. That way if you get angry with me and send me back I won't look a complete fool."

"Do you think I'm likely to do that?"

"Well, no, but I could easily mess up. I'm not used to being close to… you know."

"Don't worry. Wolfie's the only real aristocrat here, and I'm trying to teach him to talk like the rest of us peasants. Once he learns to say 'You what?' and 'innit?' he'll sound just like me and Alex, and then we can all be peasants together. Seriously, Billy, just relax and you'll be fine. I'm quite prepared for you to get it wrong a couple of times, and I'm certainly not going to kick you back to the stables if you do. So stop hovering by the door and come and sit down."

"But servants aren't supposed…"

"I know," I interrupted. "But you'd better get used to it, because I'm not like most bosses. When it's just the four of us you get to relax and be one of the group. When we're with other people, I suppose you'll have to act like a very correct little servant. That's really just about the only thing you need to remember. And if it worries you, just tell yourself that I'm strange."

"And he's not joking about that," said Alex. "They don't come much stranger."

"Well, you're not exactly Mr Normal, are you?" I retorted.

"Normal's boring," said Alex.

"True," I agreed. "So, plans: what are we doing this afternoon? I'd like to go and look for the hole between worlds before much longer. Maybe we could borrow the steam-car this afternoon?"

"I think Uncle Gil is intending to take you up in Excalibur," said Wolfie. "Apparently the weather is going to be perfect – clear skies and not too much wind."

"Oh, okay," I said. "That might be fun, I suppose. Then let's ask him if we can borrow the car tomorrow."

"And what if we find the hole?" asked Alex.

"Well, if it looks stable we don't need to do anything," I said. "If it looks wobbly, though… I suppose you'll have to decide whether to go through or not."

"What about you?"

"I'll be staying here, at least for now. If the hole is stable I'll probably want to make a trip back to London to say goodbye to Auntie Megan and Uncle Jim; if it isn't I'll just have to give you a letter for them – assuming you decide to go yourself, that is. Don't forget the police could still be looking for you."

"That's true. I'd almost forgotten, to be honest. Obviously if it's a choice between Feltham and here it'll be no choice at all. Maybe I should just pop through the hole and phone home to see what's happening instead of just catching the first bus back to London. What do you think?"

"I agree that you should check first. But I'm not exactly impartial here, because I'd prefer you to stay here whether they're looking for you or not."

"Really?"

"Obviously. We're mates, remember? I don't want you to disappear out of my life."

"I'll remind you that you said that next time I annoy you," said Alex. "But thanks, anyway. And I suppose we don't need to decide what to do about the hole until we actually find the damned thing. So – do you think I'll be able to come with you this afternoon? Only I'd definitely like to if I'm allowed."

"I think we will all… We'll all be going," said Wolfie.

"Sick!" said Alex, enthusiastically.

"Sick?" queried Wolfie.

"That means good," I explained. "They talk funny in London. When you say 'all' – does that include Billy?"

"I don't think so. But then probably Uncle Gil did not… didn't know Billy would be here when he suggested it. I am sure he can come if you tell Uncle Gil that you want him to."

"Then I'll go and ask him now," I said. "Billy, come with me. I'll see you two at lunch."

We found Uncle Gil in his office. He said he had no objection to Billy coming with us, but that he'd need a change of clothing – he could hardly wear his current kit; which had a distinct horsey aroma. He sent me to find Allchorn. Allchorn agreed to find Billy some clothing suited to an inside position and then sent us to find Mrs Sweeting, who in turn explained that she had assigned Billy a third floor room at the top of the front stairs, since that way he would be as close as possible to my room. There was still fifteen minutes before lunch, so we went up to the third floor to have a look at it.

It was smaller than the corner room that Wolfie and I used, but it was certainly adequate for one person, and Billy was delighted with it.

"You might find it a bit lonely," I warned him. "You're quite a long way from everyone else up here."

"I don't mind that. At least I won't have someone snoring in my ear all night."

"Of course, in the old days you wouldn't have got a room," I pointed out. "You wouldn't even have got a bed. Once upon a time the lord's personal servant would sleep on the floor up against his door so that nobody could sneak in and assassinate him in the night. So if you get lonely up here, I'm sure there's room in front of my door."

"No, thanks, I'll stick with this. Look… please can I speak straight with you?"

"Of course."

He closed the door. "Look, Sir, you've been really kind to me, and I'm very happy to be here, but… it's not a very good way for you to behave. See, yesterday was a lot of fun, but I came away from it thinking as you was treating me almost like a friend, not a servant."

"That was the idea."

"Well, you shouldn't. If you and me get to be friends, what's going to happen when we find ourselves in the war in five or six years? Suppose you need me to do something dangerous – if you come to like me like a friend you won't want to order me to do it, and then maybe that could put you in danger instead of me. There's only one of you, but there's lots of common soldiers like me, so obviously it's better as one of us dies instead of you… look, I'm not saying this right…"

"Yes, you are. I can see what you're getting at. You're saying that sometimes an officer has to put his men in danger, and that if you and I are friends I won't want to do anything that might risk your life, even if that endangers other people, including me. Right?"

He nodded.

"Well, that might be true in the army, but I'm going to be flying an airship, and up there it's different. An airship captain doesn't put his crew into any more danger than he faces himself. If the mission succeeds, we all survive… well, mostly; if it fails, we all die. That seems fair to me – nobody has to give up his life to save someone else."

As I said those words I thought about the crewman who had tried to give his parachute to my mother, and who had actually ended up saving my uncle's life at the cost of his own. But then I told myself that the circumstances on Daedalus had been exceptional: normally there would have been enough jumpshades for everyone.

"Look," I went on, "I know it's probably bad for discipline, and that a servant who found himself being treated like a friend might go off the rails and start taking liberties. But I don't think you're like that: I think you can see the difference between what happens when it's just us, and what happens when there are other people about. I mean, we all act different with other people, too: when my uncle is there I try to behave correctly, the way he would expect the duke to behave. But when it's just us, like it was yesterday, then I can just act like a normal boy instead. It's like we all put on a bit of an act in front of other people, but we can be ourselves when we're on our own. I'd just like it to be the same for you."

"Yes, but it isn't really the same, is it, because for me, you're like your uncle is for you. Still, if that's what you want, that's what we'll do. Like I said, I had fun yesterday by just pretending as how you and the Margrave were two of the stable lads, and I'm sure as I can go on doing that."

"Great!"

He nodded, came away from the door and sat on the bed, looking at me as if he was expecting me to challenge him, but instead I just sat down beside him.

"All right," he said. "Then… can I ask you something?"

"Ask away."

"Well, it's about Alex. Are you and him… well… sort of together?"

"Well, we're friends, and we've been together for over three years now, so I'd say we were good mates."

"No, I mean… is there more? Like, are you… you know… intimate friends?"

"Oh, you mean do we have sex? No… well, not really. We're good friends, but… well, okay, a couple of times we have sort of helped each other, but that's all."

"Helped… oh, you mean you frig each other? Well, that's all right – there's quite a bit of that goes on among us lads. Only, why I ask is, I like Alex a lot – even though he's older than me and a lot more grown up he never talked down to me at all. It was like we was proper equals. And if I'm going to be spending a lot of time with you I'd like to get to know him better, only I thought that if you and him was… you know, partners, maybe you wouldn't like that – you might think as I was trying to get between you. But if you're not, then it'll be all right, won't it?"

"Sure. And I'm pretty sure Alex would like that, too. There might be times when Wolfie and I have to go to meetings, like we did yesterday morning, and it'll be better for Alex if he's got someone to talk to while we're busy. Of course, I hope you and I get to know each other better too – in fact I want all four of us to get on well together."

"That'd be good," he agreed.

"Okay. Now it's almost lunch time, so you'd better go and eat, and then find Mr Allchorn – he should have some clothes for you. And once you're changed come and find me – I'll probably be in my room."

So we sent off to our separate meals, and after lunch he reappeared in black trousers, black shoes, white shirt and black waistcoat, which was the costume worn by the other indoor male servants. He certainly looked a lot tidier, though the horsey whiff hadn't completely disappeared. I thought that it might take a while and a few hot baths before that was completely eradicated.

"Smart," I commented.

"The shoes pinch," he complained. "And I look a knob in this waistcoat. Can't I keep my old clothes?"

"No," I said. "You have to look the part. Of course, if you'd prefer to go naked I don't suppose we'd mind too much."

"I just might, at that, at least when we're on our own."

"Promises, promises," I said. "Seriously, Billy, the shoes just need breaking in a bit, that's all. By the time you've been wearing them a week they'll be fine."

"If they're not I'm going to be sure and tell you," he said; glowering.

"You're allowed to complain, as long as it's only once. After that I'll get Alex to work you over – by the time you've got two broken arms you won't notice the slight twinge in your feet."

"No, you won't. You're not like that."

"Don't bet on it…. Okay, quiet, here comes my uncle."

Uncle Gil was wearing his frock coat, ruffled shirt and riding boots, just as he had been in my dream, and that got me thinking about what I should choose as my flying costume. I presumed that Wolfie had one, although today he was just wearing his normal clothes. I decided to ask him for advice later.

Uncle Gil led us out of the house. About five hundred metres [1600 feet] from the north-east corner of it was a wooded ridge, and as we drew close I saw a pair of doors set into the bank. At first I thought my eyes were playing up, but as we got closer I saw that the doors really were that big: they must have been around fifty metres [160 feet] tall, and each of them was thirty metres [100 feet] wide. There was a normal-sized door set into the right hand one, and it looked ridiculously tiny by comparison.

Of course, I'd seen how big Bessières was, and I suppose I should have realised that with a vehicle that size you'd need a pretty big garage, but it was only once we were inside the hangar that I appreciated just how enormous this place was: not only was it high and wide, but it disappeared into the distance – the lighting was very dim and so I couldn't really see the far end of the building. But I could see that the ship inside took up most of the available space.

"Leo, this is His Majesty's Æthership Excalibur," my uncle told me. "She's a little bigger than Daedalus, and a bit better equipped, too. I'll show you round properly once we get her outside, but I'd like you to get to know her as soon as you can. Once you've made a couple of flights you'll have a fair idea of what she can do, and then I'll make you Second Officer. The sooner you get used to commanding a ship yourself, the better."

"But I don't know anything about flying," I protested.

"Yes, you do – it's all in your head somewhere, and hopefully once you're in the air it'll start to come back to you. Now let's get these doors open."

I thought that might take a bit of doing, but it turned out there was a steam engine for each door, housed in a solid stone cabin on each side of the hangar. I could understand the thick stone and double doors to the engine rooms: an open fire in the same building as a set of hydrogen tanks needs a lot of care – hence also the lack of gas lighting in the hangar: only small oil lamps were in use, and they were kept a long way from the tanks, which were at the far end of the hangar. I learned later that when the ship was being refuelled or worked on large panels in the roof could be opened to admit natural light, which was a lot safer.

Slowly the huge doors were pulled open. A large steam tractor had followed us up from the house, and when the doors finally stopped moving we saw that it had reversed up in front of the hangar. The ground crew had come with the tractor, and soon there was a cable running from the tractor to the nose of the ship. The tractor started to move, and gradually the ship emerged into the open air.

It was at least as big as Bessières, and possibly even bigger. In some ways it was similar: it had four gondolas underneath, the rear two side by side, and it had the same chain-link mesh around the hull. But it didn't have any side gondolas or a continuous gallery around the hull, just four alcoves on each side, and it had three turrets on top instead of one. It was painted mid-grey, with a red cross of Saint George across the nose, and above the name Excalibur just behind the nose cone was a white stag on a green background. I'd expected to see the leaping lion, but then I realised that this was my uncle's ship, and so it was logical that it would carry his crest instead of mine.

There was a second mooring mast in the centre of the field in front of the hangar, and the tractor towed the ship to it. Once it was safely moored the tractor rolled away and the crew began to get aboard. My uncle shepherded the four of us into the front gondola, Wolfie leaving his chair in the hands of one of the ground crew – there was a seat for him near the front of the gondola.

"This is the bridge," my uncle told us. "As well as the helm, this is the control point for the ballast, the gas envelopes and communications inside and outside the ship. Once we're airborne I'll give you the tour, but perhaps you could wait over there with Wolfie for a few minutes while we get off the ground?"

Seven other crew members came aboard, six dressed in sky-blue uniforms with white trim and one – Mr Hall the Estate Manager, who was also apparently the ship's first officer – dressed in a pseudo-military uniform of such spectacular tastelessness that the Beatles would have rejected it for their Sergeant Pepper album cover as being over the top: the principal garment was a thigh-length jacket of purple, with silver epaulettes and vast amounts of gold, silver and black braid. He was also wearing riding boots, a pair of black trousers with a purple stripe down each leg, and a black and gold belt with a sword attached.

"Do you like it?" he asked me. "The idea is that any enemy sniper who sees me will be too dazzled to be able to aim properly."

"Then I should think it works perfectly," I replied. "Isn't there a hat to go with it, though?"

"Good point. I shall have to design one."

Eventually everything was ready and we had sufficient steam to power the engines. The nose was unhooked from the mast, the ship dropped its extra ballast and we began to ascend. I watched the land drop away, and from above one thing was immediately clear: the ridge in which the hangar stood was artificial – it was too straight and too clean-cut. There was also a second hangar a bit further along, and I wondered if that had been where Daedalus had been kept.

"No," said Wolfie, when I asked him about it. "Daedalus was kept in Hangar Number One, where this one is kept now. This one was built after the crash. And there is another one being built in the second hangar, although it is not… I mean, isn't ready to fly yet. The ridge is there in case an Eagle ever gets close enough to bomb us. It hasn't happened yet, and really it shouldn't if the coastal defences do their job, but if it should ever happen there is enough earth in the ridge to provide protection against anything other than a direct hit. And there are rocket batteries in the woods and behind the stables, too."

"Helm, bearing zero nine five, cruising speed and maintain one thousand feet," ordered my uncle. "Mr Hall, you have the bridge. Come on, then, Leo: let's see if we can stir your memory."

There was a ladder leading up in the corner of the gondola, and my uncle went up it. I followed with Alex and Billy, though Wolfie showed no sign of wanting to come with us. I suppose he'd seen it all before anyway.

When I'd looked at pictures of airships I'd tended to think of them as being like a large hot air balloon: the passengers travel in the gondola, or basket, and above it there's just a lot of hot air. But it was nothing like that: there were walkways and narrow stairways inside the ship. There were no artificial lights inside – obviously an oil lamp next to a hydrogen envelope would be a bad idea – but there were portholes in the top between the rocket turrets, and there were the small galleries in the flanks of the ship that I had seen from outside, and in the nose and tail there were observation points with glass ports, and together these allowed just enough light into the ship for us to be able to see where we were going.

The other three gondolas were all engine rooms, the two rear ones driving the propellers and the forward one providing steam for the narrow steam lifting envelopes that separated the larger hydrogen ones.

We went up to one of the turrets, which were fitted with elaborate ports at the rear to channel the hot exhaust gases away from the hull. They were equipped not with the old-fashioned Congreves but with a much more accurate, though still to my mind outdated, rocket called a Hale, which didn't need the long stick of the Congreves but which spun as it flew. The problem was that in order to defeat the Eagles' armour a larger warhead was needed, which in turn reduced the space for fuel and so cut the rocket's range, but my uncle still said that they were a great deal better than the older type.

The side alcoves carried much more normal artillery in the shape of cannon, though they looked more like army field guns than naval cannon. The problem with these was that they and their shells were heavy, which meant that we could only carry four of them, two on each side.

"If we could dispense with the steam and just use hydrogen for lift we could carry more guns, and still be faster," my uncle told me. "But we simply can't risk it without better armour. We can just about afford to lose one hydrogen bag, but if we didn't separate the hydrogen envelopes with steam a single hit from a Congreve would destroy the whole ship."

"And are there enough jumpshades on board now?" I asked.

"More than enough. And we've made some other safety changes, too: if we're going to crash, one or all of the gondolas can be disconnected and dropped quickly, and that will allow us to slow our descent to the point where we have a good chance of walking away afterwards. There isn't going to be another Daedalus disaster, not on my ship."

By the time we'd visited the observation posts, the gun alcoves and the communications relay point amidships the tour had lasted about an hour. It hadn't awakened any memories, but it had certainly been interesting. And when we returned to the bridge we found that the ship was approaching London, and that was interesting too, because this London was clearly different from our London. For a start there was no Heathrow Airport, though there was a large open space a little further in that held four airship mooring towers, one of which was currently holding a ship a little smaller than ours with a union flag painted on its nose.

"That's Royal Æthership Station Harrow," my uncle told us. "There is a ring of them around the edges of the city, although they are concentrated to the east of the centre, since that's where any attack is likely to come from."

As we got closer to the centre I was looking out for the usual landmarks, but the only place I could recognise was St Paul's Cathedral: none of the taller buildings of the City were there – no NatWest Tower, no Gherkin, no Shard, no Canary Wharf. But when I looked in the opposite direction I could see Alexandra Palace (though without a TV mast) sitting on top of its hill, so at least there was still something recognisable in my part of London.

"Crikey," breathed Billy, his face pressed up against the window, "London's huge, isn't it? How many people live there?"

"About four million," Mr Hall told him.

"In the version I come from it's more like eight," said Alex. "But this version still looks pretty big from up here."

We flew on until we could see the docks just below us to our right, and this really was different: this was more like a proper port, with ships everywhere, and cranes, and vast warehouses, and lines and lines of railway wagons, and there were a couple of British naval airships a little above us too, circling slowly – I supposed the docks would be a tempting target if an Eagle could get close enough. A little further down the river there was a large battleship, a huge, square-looking thing bristling with guns, and a pair of smaller escorts, steaming slowly towards the Thames Estuary, and now we could also see rocket emplacements on both sides of the river. Clearly it wouldn't be easy for an enemy to get anywhere near the docks.

As we reached the sea Uncle Gil gave the order to turn to starboard, and we flew across the Kent fields and orchards until we reached the Channel near Dungeness. We continued south until we were in mid-Channel and then flew west-south-west above the water.

"What sort of range have we got?" I asked.

"Under normal conditions, we can go about two thousand miles. The only thing that really restricts us is the fuel: coal is heavy, and the only way to get more coal on board is to leave something else behind – the guns, or crew members, or both. Water is slightly less of a problem: we can reclaim and re-use some of the lifting-steam when it condenses, but we must have enough coal. Apparently the Earl of Crowborough is experimenting with compressed wood, which is wood chippings and sawdust pressed into blocks. He says it's lighter and more efficient than coal, and if that turns out to be true it will increase our range, but I'll want to see some figures before I'll commit myself to changing over.

"Of course we're not carrying our maximum capacity today. This is just a routine patrol, and even if we get distracted we won't be going more than three or four hundred miles."

"Ship coming our way," said the crewman at the communication desk. "Bearing two-four-five, range about two thousand yards. She's a Frenchie."

My uncle got his telescope out and so did Wolfie, and they scanned ahead of us until they picked out the oncoming ship. Wolfie handed me the telescope, and I saw the French ship just off the port bow.

"Helm, drop to one quarter both," ordered my uncle. "Signallers, stand by."

As the ship drew closer I could see more detail. This one had a tricolour on the front rather than the bees and eagles, but otherwise it looked much the same as Bessières. The only other difference was that this ship had no waist gondolas – they were all underneath the ship, the same as our own. As we got closer to each other we slowed down even more, until we were able to come to a complete stop alongside the other ship and about a hundred metres away from it. Of course it wasn't that easy: the wind was blowing a bit, and so both helmsmen had to work hard to hold position, but we were able to stay more or less on station for a minute or so at least. I looked through the telescope and saw that this ship was called Jean Rapp. I hadn't heard of him, but presumably he hadn't been one of Napoleon's first marshals. And then I saw a long white pole appear underneath their bridge, and three arms swung out from it and began to move.

"He's using English," said our signaller. "He sends 'Good morning milord. Any prey?'"

"Reply in French," said my uncle to the second signaller, who was sitting at a desk at the rear of the gondola. "Send 'Rien du tout, mon capitaine. Patrouille ennuyeuse.'"

"He says 'Better luck next time'," said our first signaller.

"Send 'Bonne chasse!'" said my uncle.

The semaphore pole under the French gondola swung up and disappeared and the ship began to move away, and a moment later my uncle said, "I think that'll do for today. Helm, new heading three-four-zero and bring her back up to cruising speed," and the ship swung back towards the English coast.

It took us another couple of hours to get back to Culham, and by then the sun was close to setting, but the ground crew was very efficient and they got Excalibur back into its hangar before it got too dark to see what they were doing. Supper was later than usual, and also a lot lighter: I supposed that a heavy meal before bed wasn't a very good idea. And then I had to break the news to Alex that he was going to be sleeping on his own. He took it better than I had expected.

"If it helps you to get your memory back, I suppose it's worth it," he said. "Just as long as you remember who I am in the morning."

"How could I forget my favourite ox?" I replied. "Seriously, Alex, it'll be fine. In fact it probably won't help my memory at all, because nothing else has – and you'd have thought that this afternoon's flight ought to have rung at least some bells."

"Yeah, but it was still pretty amazing, wasn't it? It's so quiet compared to a plane, and being able to see London spread out like that was pretty stupendous. I definitely want to do that again."

"Good, because so do I. Although whether I'd feel the same way if there were a load of Russians shooting at us is a different matter: it's easy to forget about all that hydrogen when everything's going smoothly, but when the sky is full of rockets… I'm not so sure."

"Hey, MM… actually, I like your real name, so I'm going to call you 'Leo' from now on… anyway… why do you suppose they don't use helium?"

"I've no idea," I said, "but it's a bloody good question. I'm definitely going to ask my uncle about it tomorrow. Good thinking, Alex!"

And as I made my way up to the third floor I thought it was actually an excellent question. I didn't know anything much about helium, except that it's lighter than air and doesn't burn – I didn't know where it came from or whether it was hard to produce, and if it was I supposed that might be why they didn't use it. But perhaps they simply didn't know about it, in which case maybe I could give them a way of countering the Russians' armour that didn't involve people freezing their bits off trying to dig bits of space rock out of Greenland.

Wolfie was sitting on the bed in the third-floor room waiting for me, and when I entered the room he stood up and gave me a big smile.

"So, tonight is going to be when you get your memory back," he said in German.

"Well, I hope so. But it might not happen quite so easily," I said.

"Don't be so negative! Didn't we always say that as long as we were together nothing could ever beat us?"

"I don't know, because I can't remember. But I'm certainly ready to have a go. So what do you want me to do?"

"Well, first of all we should get ready for bed."

I helped him to remove his trousers and then took off his prosthetic leg, but when I started to massage the area above the knee where the straps had left their mark he told me that it could wait. Instead he finished getting undressed, telling me to do the same, and when we were both naked he put two pillows on the floor in front of the fireplace, laid a towel across each and invited me to help him into position so that we were kneeling down and facing each other.

"Now look at your right hand," he invited me. "See the scar?"

I did – it was faint, but there was definitely a line there near the base of my thumb.

He handed me a small knife. "Open it up," he said. "We're going to renew our vows."

In my world – my other world – I think most people are too scared of AIDS or hepatitis to do this sort of thing any more, but that obviously wasn't the case here. Besides, the scar showed that I'd done this once and survived, and I didn't suppose that Wolfie had been exposing himself to too many risks recently. So I took the knife and cut my hand along the mark of the scar, and that knife was sharp, because blood welled up straight away.

Wolfie took the knife and cut his own hand, and then he grabbed my right hand in his, pressing the cuts together. Then he pulled me forward until we were close together, our right arms between our chests.

"We are brothers," he said. "We will stand together. When you call, I will come to you; when you need me, I will be there; when others attack, I will defend you. Your life shall be to me as my own. This is my undying vow."

To a fourteen-year-old that could have sounded melodramatic and way over the top, but I could imagine how serious and solemn it would have seemed to a nine- or ten-year-old – and somehow even now it didn't seem half as extreme as it should have done. And when Wolfie told me to repeat it, but in English, so that we were covered by both languages, I had no trouble in doing so with a completely serious demeanour.

"We forgot the towels the first time," he told me, "and we dripped blood all over the floor – we didn't think to use pillows then, either. This time I'm prepared."

He took a roll of bandage from the mantelpiece and, a little clumsily – he was using his left hand, after all – wrapped it around our joined hands, pinning the bandage closed with a little help from me. Then I helped him to his feet – well, foot – and we turned the light out, made our way clumsily over to the bed and got in.

"Do we have to stay like this all night?" I asked.

"No. I don't think I could sleep like this. It's just until the blood stops."

"Oh, okay. I wouldn't mind trying if you want, though. Somehow being joined to you like this feels right."

"Then let's join some more," he said, and he pushed me onto my back and rolled on top of me.

I could feel his genitals pressing against mine, and that felt good, and then he lowered his head and kissed me gently on the lips – and that was like a bright light going on in a dark room, and I saw the pair of us, barely half our present age, running about and chasing each other in the Long Meadow and then climbing on the æthership mooring mast, until old Wallis, who had been the ground crew leader when my father was still alive, threatened to tan our hides if we didn't come down immediately, and he didn't care what rank we were….

Oblivious to the effect his kiss had had, Wolfie rolled off me again and said, "Now would you like me to show you what I can do with my left hand?" and, without waiting for an answer, he took hold of my penis, brought it up to full size with a few gentle tugs and then started to rub it for me.

"Is this all right?" he asked me.

"Wolfie, that's perfect," I managed to say, and at the same time I had a clear memory of the first time he had ever done this for me, exactly like the flash memory I had seen when Alex had done this for me for the first time back in the other world.

"Good," he said, squeezing my right hand with his. "So, let's see if I've forgotten my technique over the past four years…"

He hadn't – at least, not as far as I could tell, because this felt really, really good. And it got better and better, until finally I reached the point where I couldn't control it any longer…

If being kissed had been like a light coming on in a dark room, this was more like an atomic bomb going off: an absolute flood of memories and sensations poured over me, far more than I could handle, so that after a few seconds the explosion overwhelmed me completely and I passed out.

Chapter Eight

According to popular fiction, if you forget things as a result of a bang on the head, the way to remember them again is another bang on the head. I don't think there's any actual medical evidence that this works in real life, but the idea seems to prevail nonetheless. But I don't think I've ever read a story in which memories are restored when someone has a particularly powerful orgasm – and yet I can bear witness to the fact that, in one case at least, it worked.

Okay, I don't think I got everything back, but I do know that when I came around – and it was to find the bandage off my right hand, the light turned on and Wolfie leaning over me looking worried – I could remember far more than I had been able to previously.

"Hey, Wolfie," I greeted him. "You never did that so well that it knocked me out before, did you?"

He shook his head. "Are you all right?" he asked.

"I'm fine. Turn the light out… no, wait a moment – throw me one of the towels so that I can clean up a bit."

He hopped around the bed and passed me a towel. After I'd used it he extinguished the light and hopped back to the bed, and once he was safely back beside me I rolled up close to him, hugged him and kissed his cheek.

"Give me five minutes to get my breath back and then I'll show you what I can do with my right hand," I told him. "So – apart from renewing our vows, what else were you going to try to restore my memory?"

"I hoped that just sleeping together might do it, but if not I was going to try going into the tunnels tomorrow when we wake up," he said. "That really ought to do it."

"I thought you couldn't manage in there now?"

"I'll be able to if you are there to help me."

"Hmmm. Look, Wolfie… when you smashed your leg up, did you do any other damage?"

"Nothing serious. Why?"

"Well, why… I mean, I've seen you swimming, and you can get up the last staircase on your own, too… so… why are you using a wheelchair?"

"Because of my leg, of course!"

"Sorry, Wolfie, but that's rubbish. Kids back in my world get their legs blown off by landmines or lose them in accidents, and a few months later they're walking again – not just walking, but running and playing football and stuff, and that's sometimes on two artificial legs. You've had a wooden leg for four years, so you should be able to run about on it as well as anyone by now. And I know you – you've never been the sort to give up on stuff. So what's going on?"

"I told you, I…"

"Wolfie, it's me," I interrupted. "We never lie to each other. Tell me the truth."

He was quiet, so I hugged him again. "Come on," I said, gently. "I want to know."

"You want to know the truth? I'm lazy," he said. "The chair is easier. And after the crash, when I thought you'd gone for good, I just lost interest in everything. Uncle Gil tried to get me going again, and my own uncle came and shouted at me, telling me that kings don't just give up. I told him I wasn't a king and hoped I'd never have to be one, and he said he hoped that too, since if I became king it would mean that he and his children would be dead, but that I had to act as if it was going to happen, all the same. But none of it did any good: I simply couldn't interest myself in a future that didn't have you in it.

"I know that's very stupid – after all, lots of people lose the people closest to them but still carry on, like your mother kept going after your father died, but… I was ten years old, so I suppose it wasn't unreasonable to behave childishly. So I decided I'd use the chair and only walk when I had to – it is still uncomfortable, you know."

"Yes, but if you'd used the leg straight away, by now it probably wouldn't hurt at all," I pointed out. "Anyway, that's going to change: now I'm back I want you walking. To start with you can still use the chair if we're going a long way – like if we go down to the river, for instance – but I really don't want to see you using it inside the house. Is that fair?"

"Well… I don't know. I think it'll hurt, and then I'll get bad-tempered, and I don't want to get into fights with you…"

"You won't. We'll be with you, and if you really can't manage on your own Alex and Billy will be around to help you, and obviously I will whenever we're up here. But in six months' time I want to see you running about the Long Meadow like we used to when we were little, okay? And maybe we can even try climbing the mast again, now old Wallis isn't around to yell at us for it."

"You remember that? That happened when we were barely eight, I think."

"You were still seven. It was funny, though – and we got quite a long way up it, too. No wonder the old git was so worried."

"You really can remember! How much else has come back?"

"Most of it, I think, at least as far as you and I are concerned. There are still some gaps, but I can remember pretty much everything we used to get up to. And one thing I can remember is how much you liked me to… well, lie on your back and I'll show you."

He did that and I took hold of him and stroked it until it went hard… and then I burst out laughing.

"What is it?" he asked.

"I've just remembered that bet you told me about, the one about who was going to get his pubes first. Actually I have got a few, but I don't mind conceding the bet, because you've obviously got a lot more than me… and if you like I'll pay the penalty tomorrow."

"I bet you won't!" he said. "You only remember what the passages were like when we used them all the time, but nobody has been in there for years, and the last time I looked through the panel there were cobwebs everywhere. Put it this way: I wouldn't even want to go in there with a light, and I certainly wouldn't go from the cellar to the attic stark naked and without a lamp, or even a box of lucifers, not for ten thousand guineas. So I won't make you do it either. Once we've cleaned up a bit and got rid of the cobwebs, and once we're sure there aren't any rats in there, then you can do the run. But even if you can remember the route – and you haven't been in there for four years, remember – if you tried doing it before we get rid of the spiders it would drive you insane."

"We never ever broke our word to each other," I reminded him, "so if you tell me I have to do it tomorrow, I will. But… well, you know I don't like spiders much, so I'd definitely prefer to wait until we've cleaned the passages."

"Then we'll make a start on that tomorrow. And you only have to do the run, too, not all the other things we added on."

"God, yes, that's right," I said, remembering. "We really went to town on it, didn't we? I mean, I can understand why I did: I was older than you, and so I felt sure I'd reach puberty first. But for some reason you were dead sure you would, and so every time I added something to the bet, you went one step further. And it turns out you were right, too – but what made you so sure?"

"Well, there are only four months between us, which isn't really very much. I was a little taller than you, too, and in other ways – you know – we were almost exactly the same size, so I thought that if I wanted it enough it would happen to me first. Except that by the time it actually did happen, about six months ago, I really didn't care any more."

"Well, I'm glad it did," I said, stroking his little curls, "even if I wasn't here to see it for myself. Still, I'll be here to see you get your first underarm hair, and for the first time you shave – assuming you're not going to grow a beard, of course?"

"No, I don't think so. I'm not sure that red hair really works with a beard. So – you're really going to stay, then?"

"Of course I am. I was going to anyway, but now that I can remember most of my past I don't think there can be any question that I belong here… or that I belong with you, either."

He pulled me on top of him and hugged me hard. "Oh, God, I've really got you back," he breathed.

"Yes, you have," I agreed, returning the hug. "But if that chair of yours hasn't been consigned to the attic by Christmas you might wish you hadn't, because I'll resurrect all the penalties for losing the bet about our pubes and apply them all to you instead."

"No, you damn well won't!" he said.

"Yes," I said, kissing him on the tip of his nose, "I damn well will. But first there was something else I had to do to you…"

I rolled back off him, took hold of his erection once more and set to work. I remembered that he had always wriggled around a lot when I did this for him, and so I did my utmost to draw it out this time, and by the time he finally climaxed he was writhing about like a man possessed.

"Good?" I asked afterwards, passing him the towel.

"Oh, yes. God, I've been waiting four years for that, and it was worth waiting for."

"You don't mean to say that you haven't done it at all since I got lost?" I asked incredulously.

"No, obviously not. But I've only done it myself, and that really isn't the same, is it?"

"No. But couldn't you have found a servant to do it for you? I'm sure you could have found a boots, or one of the stable-lads, or a gardener's boy, or someone like that, if you'd wanted to."

"Yes, but he wouldn't have been you, and I'd decided ages ago that I would never let anyone else touch me like that except you. Besides, I'm not sure about using a servant that way. Probably some wouldn't mind, but I'm not sure I'd be very happy if I were a servant and one of my masters ordered me to do that."

"I suspect Billy wouldn't mind," I said. "But now you've got me it isn't going to be an issue, is it?"

We settled down, although I lay awake for a while thinking about some of the memories I had just recovered. Certainly Wolfie had been right about one thing: being a duke wasn't a bed of roses. Not only did I have responsibilities to my family and the people who worked for me, but I also had responsibilities towards the Crown and the country as a whole. I think it's Spiderman who talks about great power bringing with it great responsibility, but the same was true of money: our family was undoubtedly wealthy, but that brought with it a lot of obligations, both locally – ensuring that the people who lived on my estate and who worked for me were provided for and looked after when they got too old to work, and supporting the king…

That had come as a bit of a surprise, but now I remembered that our history over the past two hundred years or so was substantially different from that of the world in which I had been living for the past four years. As a child I had studied the pivotal period of history in which the French Empire had begun, and I knew that in this country there had almost been a full-blown revolution as well: dissatisfaction with the growing insanity of George III and intense dislike of the wastrel Prince Regent, combined with the overthrow of the French royal family, had led to our own king and his heir being deposed. There had been a brief Republic under the leadership of Charles Fox, but after his death it had been felt that a monarchy was after all the preferred course. However, not wishing to see the return of the Georges, Parliament had instead decided to invite the current Jacobite claimant to return, on the understanding that Britain was a Parliamentary Democracy and not, as the earlier Stuart kings had claimed, an absolute monarchy.

And so in 1808 the Jacobite King Charles IV had taken the throne, and his successors had continued to reign, for the most part in harmony with Parliament, ever since. The present king, James V, had been on the throne for fifteen years and was thought to be a good king on the whole, although his passion for fox-hunting worried a few people: the spectacle of the king upside down in a muddy ditch isn't too edifying, and as his son was still only eight years old a lot of people worried about what would happen if the king broke his stupid neck one day.

Anyway, as a senior member of the aristocracy I was supposed to support him and advise him, and although the advice part of that was purely theoretical, the support for the institution of the monarchy was supposed to be unconditional. Unfortunately Auntie Megan was a Republican, and so for the past three years I hadn't heard anything very positive about the monarchy. I supposed that as long as I didn't express an opinion about it, nobody could complain.

The main method in which I was expected to support the country, apart from paying taxes, of course, was to provide military aid, which in my family meant building and flying airships. My father was unusual in preferring to fight with the land army, because flying was in our blood, and my mother's family had also been keen aeronauts, which is why she had been flying Daedalus as a privateer even before my father died. And now I could remember my earlier flights with her, and that made me all the more determined to continue the tradition. The only thing I still couldn't remember was jumping out of the stricken ship with Wolfie on the day my mother had died. I was still trying to wrestle that memory out of wherever in my head it was hiding when I fell asleep.

***

Next morning Wolfie and I got down to the breakfast-room before Alex (which didn't surprise me – I already knew that Alex liked to stay in bed when he could).

"Leo has got his memory back!" Wolfie told him, when he finally arrived. "That's really good news, isn't it?"

"Is that right?" Alex asked me.

"Who are you?" I asked him, as deadpan as I could, "and what are you doing in my house?"

It got him, too: for a moment a look of dismay came over his face. But then I couldn't keep a straight face any longer and I grinned at him and drew him into a hug.

"Gotcha!" I said. "Yes, it's true… well, not completely, because there are still a few gaps, but I can remember most of it. And I can still remember the past four years perfectly, too, so I haven't forgotten you. Like I said last night, I don't think that would be possible. So you got through the night on your own, then?"

"Not exactly." None of the adults had yet arrived, but he still lowered his voice – there were a couple of maids fiddling around the serving trays. "I didn't fancy being on my own, so I went upstairs to Billy's room and asked if I could sleep with him. I thought it might be a bad idea to ask a servant to sleep on the second floor, but I didn't think anyone could object too much if a guest wanted to sleep on the third floor. Anyway, he said he'd like that, and so I spent the night with him."

"And?" I asked.

"And what?"

"Come on, Alex – what happened?"

"Nothing! Well… nothing much, anyway. I persuaded him to sleep without his nightshirt on, and you know I prefer not to wear anything in bed, so it was cosy. But we didn't do anything more than look at each other.

"We did talk quite a bit, though. Life really is different here: until yesterday he'd never been further away than Abingdon. No wonder he thought London was huge – he's never even been to Oxford before."

"So what does he do when he's not working?"

"Plays with the other stable-lads, mostly. They go down to the river and swim, or chase each other through the woods and stuff. Except sometimes he likes to be on his own, and then he goes for walks, or if it's wet he has a corner of one of the hay-lofts that he uses. I asked him what he thought he would do in the future, and he said he doesn't really know, other than that he hopes you'll let him join the crew of Excalibur once he's old enough.

"He really enjoyed yesterday afternoon – it was every bit as good as he'd expected, and he definitely wants to do it again, though he won't ask you himself because he thinks it would make him look pushy. I told him not to be so stupid, and that you'd be happy to take him with us again, as long as you knew he'd enjoyed it the first time, but I'm afraid I haven't got him out of his feudal mindset just yet.

"I asked if he saw himself getting married – sorry, but I had to ask – and he said he hadn't thought about it yet, but that usually servants did get married – either he'd find someone on the estate, like one of the maids, or maybe when he's older he'd meet someone in Abingdon – most of the older servants seem to go there if they want to socialise. But maybe if I end up staying I can persuade him not to waste his time with girls…"

"So you've given up on me already, have you?" I asked, playfully.

"Leo, you're the duke," he reminded me. "That puts you out of my orbit, even if you weren't already spoken for." He looked meaningfully at Wolfie. "Besides, as soon as you're old enough they'll want to marry you off to some daughter of an archduke or prince with no chin, a face like a horse and an IQ to match."

I stared at him in horror. He might have been joking, but of course the bottom line was that this was true: my family would want me to father a son in order to keep the family name alive, and I'd only be allowed to marry someone 'suitable', which meant from the upper levels of the aristocracy. I had a terrifying mental image of ending up shackled to some inbred halfwit, and for the first time I contemplated just turning my back on all of this and going back to London with Alex.

But then I pulled myself together. In the first place, nobody could force me to get married: if I didn't, the line would simply move to my uncle's family instead, just as it would have done if I had never found my way back here. Plenty of aristocrats didn't get married: King Franz of Bavaria, who was currently in exile in Italy, had never married, and when he died the crown would simply pass to his brother Max and then to his children, so why should it be any different for me? And secondly, I was still far too young to worry about it. It wouldn't become an issue for several years yet, and if I did find myself getting leaned on then I could always threaten to go back to Alex's world unless they let me make my own decisions.

"To start with, I've got no intention of getting married any time soon," I told Alex. "And for seconds, I don't think being close to Wolfie stops me from having fun with you, too. So you don't have to abandon the idea of us going on the way we have been unless you really want to. Do you?"

"Obviously not."

"Well, then, shut up," I said. "Although if you want to have fun with Billy too, feel free. I won't mind a bit."

When my uncle came in for his breakfast I asked if he had any particular plans for us for the day, and when he said no I asked if we could borrow the auto-carriage so that we could go back to Winterbourne Stoke and start looking for the hole. He said he'd be happy for us to do that, and that he'd notify the chauffeur as soon as we'd finished breakfast.

The family steam-car turned out to be the same basic design as Sir Edmund's, though ours was painted red and had the full coat of arms on each side, which I thought was a bit ostentatious. But Wolfie assured me that it was expected for the aristocracy to announce themselves in this way wherever they went, and besides, I could hardly ask them to paint over it.

The chauffeur's name was Murdoch and, like Adams, was enthusiastic about the vehicle. I couldn't resist asking him if he had encountered any problems with the hopper when going downhill, and that confirmed me in his eyes as a car enthusiast, making him mine for life. He said that he'd modified the hopper himself which, together with the better grade of coal he was using, had eliminated the problem completely.

We took Billy with us – Wolfie had agreed to leave his chair behind, and I was afraid that if we did a lot of walking he'd find it hard to cope, in which case Billy and Alex might end up having to carry him – and found that he'd never been in an auto-carriage before. He said that it wasn't as good as an æthership, but it was still interesting.

It took us just over an hour to get back to Shrewton. Alex asked why we hadn't gone straight to the barn, and I said there was something I wanted to do first, and I opened the sliding panel behind Murdoch's head and directed him to the house of Squire Cheevers.

This time we rang the front doorbell, but it was still Mrs Peters who answered it.

"Do you think we could see the squire?" I asked. "Here's my card."

I'd remembered that I had a stack of ornate gold-embossed visiting cards, complete with the ducal crest, in a drawer in my uncle's study, and I had been delighted to find that they were still there. I'd hardly used any of them – ten-year-old boys don't do a lot of formal visiting, even if they are dukes – but I thought that this was a situation where they would come in useful.

Mrs Peters looked at the card and her mouth dropped open.

"Oh, I'm sure he'll see you, Your Grace," she said, trying not to look too flustered. "Please come with me."

She took us back to the study and announced me loudly, and the squire stood up and did some gaping of his own.

"I just wanted to come by and thank you," I said, while he was still trying to find his words. "It was your kindness that set me on the road to finding out who I was. You took a couple of scruffy boys from the street and looked after us, and then were generous enough to provide transport and an introduction to Sir Edmund. I am in your debt, and if ever I can be of assistance to you, you only have to ask."

"Well… I mean… bless me! I thought you were well-bred, but I never would have guessed… And as I said then, I was only doing my Christian duty."

"A lot of other people wouldn't have done," I said. "I'd have quite understood if you'd had us thrown into the street. But you didn't, so, like I said, if I can ever help you, I will. Oh, and may I present my friend Wolfgang-Christian, Margrave of Brandenburg-Bayreuth? Sadly, he is in exile, which is why he's my guest at present, but should the unfortunate state of affairs in the German kingdoms be reversed you'll find that you have a friend in Prussia, too.

"Anyway, we'll leave you in peace, but I wanted to come by in person to thank you."

"Well, you made his day," commented Alex, once we were back in the car.

"I hope so," I said. "After all, that was a damned good breakfast."

We got Murdoch to drop us at the end of the track that led to the barn, asking him to come back to pick us up at four o'clock, which would get us back to Culham in plenty of time to get changed for supper.

"There are three pubs in Shrewton," I told him. "I'm sure at least one of them will serve food. Probably it would be best if you don't drink too many beers with it, though."

I didn't know if it was an offence to be drunk in charge of a steam-engine in this world, but I thought I'd much rather he was sober to drive us home, whatever the law said.

Murdoch drove away and we walked along the track until we reached the barn. The track was around five hundred metres [1600 feet] long, and although he didn't actually say anything it was obvious to me that Wolfie was suffering a bit by the time we got there: he probably hadn't walked that far in one go before. So I took us straight up the ladder to the hayloft where Alex and I had slept on the night we had changed worlds, and once we were there I told him to lie back and rest. I asked Billy to stay with him while Alex and I had a thorough look around the barn, checking everywhere we had been and looking in every corner in search of anything that looked out of place.

But after half an hour or so we were forced to come to the conclusion that this was exactly what it looked like: a farm building that belonged in this world, and this world only.

"How are you feeling?" I asked Wolfie.

"Not too bad," he said. "Provided I can rest every now and again I'll be fine."

"Well, look, it's quite a way from here to Stonehenge – it's at least a mile and a half [2 km] each way, and I really don't think you should be trying to go that far just yet. So perhaps you should just stay here and…"

"No," he interrupted. "You were right: I should have done this a long time ago, and it's time I started. As long as we take it slowly I'll get there – and if it does get too much, perhaps Alex could carry me, just for a few minutes? He might as well do something useful with all those muscles…"

"What muscles?" I scoffed, and of course Alex promptly demonstrated them by picking me up and throwing me into a pile of hay.

"Can you do that?" he challenged me.

"I don't need to," I said. "I've got people to do that – if I ordered Billy to kick your butt you'd be in trouble."

Billy didn't look particularly happy about that, but Alex immediately gave him some incentive by saying, "He's got no more muscle than you have. Better make room in the hay, because if you do give that order he'll be flying your way in about five seconds."

"Go on, then, Billy," I said. "You don't have to stand for being insulted by an ox. Sort him out."

Billy did surprisingly well: he held out for a good couple of minutes before Alex managed to lift him and throw him into the hay next to me.

"What was that supposed to be?" I asked Billy. "You can't get shown up by a complete idiot. Come on – perhaps if we work together we can deal with him."

"Hang on, that's not fair!" cried Alex. "Two onto one? Although, come to think of it, you two just about make one put together."

This time it was Alex who ended up in the hay, although I'll admit that Billy did most of the work.

"Excuse me, children," said Wolfie, "but aren't we supposed to be looking for something?"

And so of course we threw him into the hay, too.

By this time Billy must have been feeling absolutely at home, because we all had hay in our hair and stuck to our clothes – we must have looked exactly like a gang of stable-lads on their day off. Squire Cheevers would undoubtedly have been a lot less likely to invite us for breakfast if we'd turned up on his doorstep looking like this… but who cared? It was fun.

However, Wolfie was right, and so we tidied ourselves up, picking the hay out of each other's hair until we looked fairly presentable again, and then we set off back along the track to the road. We took it slow, not just for Wolfie's sake, but because Alex and I wanted to keep our eyes open for any anomaly. Actually I have no idea what we were expecting to see: was it a big funnel with the air swirling about, or a blank space, or an actual hole in the ground? Still, we looked all around us as we walked, and we found absolutely nothing.

When we reached the main road we walked a little way north and then crossed the fence into the field, doing our best to keep to the route we'd taken on our outward journey. We stopped two or three times to allow Wolfie to have a breather, but eventually Stonehenge came into view, and today we could see it perfectly because there was no mist.

"Wow!" exclaimed Billy. "What's that?"

I doubt if there are many British boys of thirteen in Alex's world who wouldn't recognise a photo of Stonehenge if they saw it, so this came as a bit of a surprise.

"It's called the Great Circle," said Wolfie. "Nobody really knows why it was built, but it's old, at least four thousand years, we think."

"Haven't you ever seen a picture of it?" I asked.

Billy shook his head. "Mostly at school we're taught what might be useful to us in our work," he said. "There'd be no reason to tell us about a lot of old stones that are just there. But it looks interesting, all the same."

"It looks even more impressive when we get closer," I said.

We kept walking. Soon we were quite close to the stones, and at that point I realised something.

"There isn't a track in this world," I observed to Alex. "You realise what that means?"

"That we crossed over before we got this far," he replied. "So it's a waste of time looking at the barn, because the hole has to be somewhere around Stonehenge."

"Right," I agreed. "Now, I can remember pretty much where we went after the Anagrams dropped us off, so if we do it all in reverse… though that might be a problem, because if the guides are around we won't be able to go inside the circle."

But that turned out not to be a problem after all: when we reached the circle there were no guides – in fact there were no people at all, and no rope, either. Then I realised that the concept of tourism was unknown here, and that the only people likely to visit Stonehenge would be locals who had time on their hands or people who happened to be driving past and wanted a closer look. In any event, there was nothing to stop us walking right into the circle.

"Okay," I said. "Now when the Anagrams dropped us off we walked round to this side and then came through that arch… so let's do that in reverse."

I walked through the arch and found my situation unchanged: I was still clearly in the same world, because I could see Wolfie leaning on one of the trilithons a few yards away.

"Hold on," said Alex. "You touched that big stone in front of the arch, remember? Maybe that opened the hole."

So I went back through the arch and touched the large stone, but it didn't make the slightest difference, and nor did walking through that arch once more and then going back through the field – there was no path to follow in this world – to the point where the Germans had dropped us off. Nothing happened, and retracing our steps back through the arch into the circle didn't change anything either.

"Perhaps it only works at night?" suggested Alex. "After all, it was night when you first came through four years ago, and it was night when we came through, too. Perhaps we should come back after dark."

"That's going to be difficult," I said. "The sun doesn't set until about a quarter past eight and Murdoch is coming to pick us up at four o'clock. We'll have to arrange to come out some other day after supper."

"I don't think we could do that," said Wolfie. "It's too dangerous to use the auto-carriage after dark, and even a horse-drawn carriage would be at some risk, unless the moon is very bright."

That's when I realised that there were no lights on the steam car, which I suppose was entirely reasonable if nobody had yet invented the light bulb or the electric dynamo.

"Then we'll have to come out one evening before it gets dark, camp out overnight and get picked up again next morning," I said. "This has got to be done, and the sooner we can, the better. I'll try to fix something up with my uncle this evening."

We headed back towards the barn, but after three or four hundred metres it was clear that Wolfie was suffering. He didn't actually say anything, but he was limping badly, and the look on his face spoke for itself. So we each took a turn carrying him, and even I managed to get a reasonable distance with him on my back, although I'd have to admit that both Billy and Alex got further.

When we got back to the barn I fished my watch out of my pocket – I'd taken to wearing my tenth birthday pocket-watch instead of my wristwatch – and found that it was only about two o'clock, which left us with a couple of hours to kill before Murdoch came to pick us up. Wolfie was in no condition to do anything energetic, but Alex had his cards with him, and that gave us something to do. We had to teach Wolfie and Billy some of the games we knew – both had used cards, but not very much – but we stuck to simpler games, and soon they were both able to join in fully.

Of course one thing led to another, and in due course we found ourselves playing strip games. By now Billy was joining in everything quite happily, and he was not slow to join in when I lost and Alex started making derogatory remarks about the size of my equipment. I got my own back, though: we started adding forfeits for the losers, and in due course I was able to make Billy run around the outside of the barn naked, and when Alex lost shortly after that I dared him to run all the way down the track to the road naked. By the time he got back the rest of us were all fully dressed and Alex's clothes had mysteriously disappeared, and none of us would tell him where they were until he'd apologised to us for his insulting comments earlier.

I'm fairly sure that Alex wanted to take things further and introduce some overtly sexual forfeits to the game, and I'm pretty sure he would have done if Wolfie hadn't been there, but he still seemed to be a bit in awe of Wolfie's status and so was unwilling to risk annoying him by making him do anything he wasn't happy about. I could have told him that Wolfie would have been happy to do just about anything, but I didn't really get an opportunity to do so.

That night I slept with Alex again – that evening he was a bit down about our failure to find the hole and I thought he would prefer it if we could stay together.

"Look, don't worry," I told him. "We'll find it. You're probably right about it only happening at night – that would certainly help to explain why people aren't falling through it all the time. We'll go out again tomorrow evening – and at least now we know more or less where to look."

But it turned out that we weren't able to go back the following evening, because the next day was Sunday, and that was Murdoch's day off. Actually it was the day off for most of the staff, although Cook and some of the other kitchen staff had to work, and as far as I could tell Allchorn hardly ever took time off.

In the morning my uncle told me that we were expected to attend church. I wasn't all that keen: as I've said before, I'm not sure that I even believe in God, and so I thought it would be hypocritical for me to attend a service. But Uncle Gil said that as head of the estate I more or less had to attend, because it would give rise to a lot of adverse comment if I didn't. And so I put on a smart suit – our new clothes had arrived the previous afternoon, proving just how fast a tailor can work sometimes – and walked, with my uncle, Mr Hall, Alex and Wolfie, who sensibly used his chair because he was still a bit sore from the previous day, and followed by the household and the estate workers, to the church in the village of Clifton Hampden, which was the nearest church to the house.

The family had its own box pew at the front, and once we were installed I had to suffer an effusive greeting from the vicar, followed by a prayer of thanksgiving for my safe return. I'm glad the pew had high sides, because I must have been bright red with embarrassment. The one good thing about the service was that it wasn't too long, probably no more than three-quarters of an hour, and the vicar at least kept his sermon to a thoroughly respectable ten minutes.

After lunch I'd been hoping we might take the boat out again, but then I remembered that in this world the Sabbath was taken far more seriously than back in Alex's world: here everything was closed, frivolous pastimes were frowned upon, and people were expected to either pursue quiet activities like reading, or go for contemplative walks around the grounds. I didn't particularly fancy either, so I got Wolfie on his own and asked if we could spend the afternoon cleaning up the secret passages and exploring them.

"Well, I suppose we could call it 'walking'," he said. "We would just be walking with a broom and a duster. But… what about Alex?"

"Ideally I'd like him with us," I said, "but I know that the tunnels are really just our secret, so perhaps I could persuade him to go and see what Billy's doing this afternoon. But, look, Wolfie, sooner or later I want to tell him about them – and maybe Billy, too. I don't like keeping secrets from my friends."

"I know. Perhaps when we've cleaned them and made sure we can remember where they go… but I think it should just be you and I who reopen them."

So I went and found Alex. "There's something I need to do this afternoon," I said. "Seeing that it's Billy's day off, why don't you find him and take him for a walk, or something? Maybe he can show you round some of the outbuildings."

"You're trying to get rid of me again, aren't you?" he said.

"Well…"

"Don't worry, I'm not going to get all huffy about it. I know there's stuff you have to do – and I wouldn't mind visiting Billy's private hayloft. That might be fun."

So Alex went off to find Billy, and Wolfie and I made our way up to our room on the third floor. Wolfie had managed to get hold of a broom, a couple of feather dusters on sticks and an oil lamp, and I had brought my flashlight.

"What's that?" asked Wolfie, when I showed it to him.

"It's a torch," I told him.

"No, it isn't. A torch is a long bit of wood with some rags or something on the end that you can set fire to."

"This is an electric torch," I explained. "You don't need a fire, you just press the button. Look," and I turned it on.

"Wow! It's a lot brighter than an oil lamp! How does it work?"

"There are some batteries inside, and they light the bulb."

"What's a battery?"

I turned the torch off, unscrewed the bottom and pulled out the first battery.

"This is a battery," I told him. "I'm afraid I can't tell you exactly how it works – I just know that it does."

"And what makes the light?"

I unscrewed the other end and showed him the bulb.

"What, that little thing makes all that light?" he said. "That is incredible! I wonder what else you could do with that sort of thing? I'm sure it would make a huge difference to life here…"

"I suppose it could," I said, reassembling the torch. "Anyway… shall we go?"

I went up to the fireplace and pressed the catch, and the left side of the fireplace swung open once more. I stepped inside,with Wolfie close behind me.

After about five metres [15 feet] the passage divided, with one branch going straight ahead and the other leading to a steep staircase going down. I went straight ahead, and this passage soon became another steep staircase going up. At the top of the staircase was a low wooden panel, and when I pressed the release catch – I could still remember where this one was – the panel slid open and we were in the attic. Actually it was more of a roof space than a proper attic: there was barely room for us to stand upright, and although there was some junk up here, old furniture and the like, there was no sign that anyone had moved anything here for a very long time.

If we had walked straight ahead we would have come to the hatch that led out onto the roof, and beyond that, at the far end of the roof space, there was a proper staircase leading down to the third floor. We'd wondered if there was another set of passages over on the far side of the house, but if there was we hadn't managed to find it.

We went back down the secret staircase again, this time going on down to the second floor. Here there were more choices: a long passage leading off towards the servants' quarters at the rear of the house, and a shorter one leading towards the front of the house. Both appeared to be dead ends, but we were convinced they had exits into other rooms, if only we could find the hidden door releases.

Logic said that there had to be an exit into the ducal bedroom on the first floor, but we hadn't found that, either, or the one at the end of another long first-floor passage. There didn't seem to be an exit on the ground floor: the stairs just went all the way down to the basement, emerging at the back of one of the bays in the wine cellar. By the time we got there we were dusty and festooned with cobwebs, but the tunnels were more or less clear once more.

"That light of yours is going to be very useful," Wolfie commented, brushing the cobwebs and dust from my clothes. "You can see far better with it than with an oil lamp. Maybe we'll be able to spot where the other hidden door catches are with it."

"The batteries don't last that long, though," I told him. "And once they're dead we won't be able to get any more, obviously. But they'll last long enough for us to be able to do some good exploring."

We walked through to the normal staircase, which came out at the back of the great staircase in the main hall. This was right next to the cleaning cupboard beside the door through to the servants' part of the house, so we were able to dispose of our dusters and broom unseen.

That night I slept with Alex: Wolfie's comments about my torch meant that we had things to talk about.

"If we do find the hole tomorrow night," I said, "and assuming it's safe for you to go back to London… are you going to stay there or come back here?"

"Come back, of course," he said. "I can't just walk away from all this. I thought you knew that."

"I hoped that's what you'd say, obviously, but seeing that you've got a family back there… anyway, the point is this: if you go home and then come back here you'll be able to bring stuff with you. So we need to decide what you should bring."

"You mean spare batteries for the torches and stuff?"

"Well, yes, but I was really thinking in terms of technology. You could bring back some books, or print out stuff from online. It's pretty obvious that we could give this world information that would change the place completely, and would certainly help to win the war. The question is, what should we give them – or should we even mention technology from our world at all?"

"Well, of course we should! I mean, if we told them about aircraft, surely that would give us a massive advantage in the war? Even fairly basic planes are likely to be able to defeat the Russian airships, even if they do have armour."

"Yes, but think about it: that would mean we'd have to tell them about petrol-driven engines. Sure, it might help to win the war, although you can bet that the Russians wouldn't be far behind once they'd shot one or two of ours down and examined them, but I was thinking of the bigger picture: pollution, political chaos – I suppose most of the oil in this world is in the Middle East – and all the bad stuff that comes with the internal combustion engine. I don't think we'd really be doing this world a favour.

"Electricity, on the other hand… yes, we'd need to find a way of generating it cleanly if possible, but probably a few coal-fired power stations wouldn't be too bad, since everything uses coal already here. Can you think of anything else?"

"I suppose nuclear energy would be a bad idea," said Alex. "Telephones? Radio, perhaps? That would make a big difference to communications. Look at the way we had to stop and wiggle a semaphore around when we were talking to the French airship. If we'd both had radio we wouldn't even have needed to stop moving."

"Talking of airships, we definitely need to know about helium," I said. "Where is it found, how do you produce it, and so on. We'll draw up a list in the morning. And I'll ask my uncle if we can have some jewellery or something, because I don't think banks in your world would accept our currency. Then you can sell it and that'll give you enough money to buy some reference books. You'd probably better get your parents to do the actual selling – if a kid of our age tried selling jewels the shop would be sure to think they were stolen, especially this close to the riots."

The following afternoon we went back to Stonehenge, just the two of us – there seemed little point in either Wolfie or Billy coming with us, since we were simply going to wait until it was dark and then try to find the hole. I arranged for Murdoch to return next morning to pick me up: if we found the hole I'd be on my own, and if not… I preferred not to think about the negatives at this point.

We'd borrowed a small tent from the local militia, and we pitched it not too far from Stonehenge. If we'd done that in Alex's world the police would doubtless have appeared to move us on pretty quickly, but here nobody seemed to notice.

By the time we got the tent up it was starting to rain, so we dived inside and spent the next couple of hours playing cards, though not for forfeits this time: we were both nervous about finding the hole and so weren't really in the mood for strip games.

Gradually it got dark, and the weather got worse, too: by the time it was properly dark there was a brisk wind blowing the rain about, and although we had rainproof jackets on we were still pretty wet by the time we reached the stones. We went straight to the lone arch on the north-west arc of the circle and tried going through it, in both directions; both of us tried touching the larger stone next to the arch; and for good measure we tried touching every other stone that was anywhere close to that arch. Nothing worked: the area outside the circle where the path lay in Alex's world remained nothing but grass. By the time we gave up we were wet, tired and fed up.

"Well, it looks like you're stuck with me," commented Alex as we walked back to the tent.

"I don't mind that at all," I assured him. "On the other hand, I can understand that you might not be quite as happy about it as I am. And unless we can think of some other plan, it looks as if we're both stuck in this world for the rest of our lives…"

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